Challenges in warehouse management are all too common. The art of warehouse operation not only affects stock levels, order fulfillment, and picking processes but can also impact warehouse employees. And if it’s not done correctly, customer satisfaction can suffer.
Is your warehouse space optimized? Do you understand your inventory levels sufficiently? Or, could you use a warehouse management system to help you get it in order?
Below, you will find three of the most common challenges in warehouse management and the solutions that will help you overcome them.
The Top 3 Challenges in Warehouse Management
Warehouse challenges can affect your bottom line, so it’s important to take the steps necessary to eliminate them. Here are the three most common issues warehouse managers have when managing their distribution centers.
1. Poor Forecasting
The Problem: Inventory management is critical throughout the year, but seasonal demands can add an extra layer of stress. After all, if you don’t have the inventory you need to fill your customer’s orders, they may begin to look for a distributor who does. The problem? Trying to keep up with inventory without the help of a warehouse management system.
The Solution: eoStar Warehouse, eoWarehouse, is a warehouse management system that helps you accurately forecast your needs – seasonally and throughout the year. Instead of guessing or trying to anticipate your future needs, let eoStar’s algorithms use your historical data to forecast your needs. Just think: no more wondering if you’ve ordered enough – or too little – and losing sleep over it. Instead, rely on the genius in the background to accurately forecast your customer orders.
2. Picking Errors
The Problem: Fulfilling your customer’s orders correctly is the foundation of your distribution business. But picking, packing, and loading are time-consuming processes that can make or break your order management process. When your pickers use pick sheets based on human calculations, it can cause errors and that makes for unhappy customers.
The Solution: Pickers need automated picking systems to organize their picks and ensure that no errors occur. Solutions like eoStar’s warehouse management system feature barcode technology that allows pickers to simply scan a barcode once it’s picked. That information goes into the system and is recorded. Pickers can also use the warehouse management system’s voice system to save time and money by reducing errors.
3. Warehouse Optimization
The Problem: You only have so much space in your warehouse whether it’s floor space or vertical space, and as a warehouse manager, it’s your job to optimize warehouse space so that you fit more products, arrange the product logically, and ensure that faster-to-move products are upfront and easy to access. The problem? Optimizing your warehouse in a way that makes your facility more efficient is not easy without technology.
The Solution: By using eoStar’s warehouse management system, all of your warehouse optimization problems will be solved. You will no longer tell a customer that you don’t have a product only to find out later that you do. Alternatively, you will never accept an order only to call the customer back and tell them that you made an order and don’t have the product. In that case, you may place a rush order on the product to appease the customer and pay the higher related fees. And wouldn’t you like to avoid all that inventory that spoils because it goes out of date and you can’t sell it anymore? Finally, you will never receive stock only to spend a lot of time trying to figure out where to place it.
That’s because you will rely on real-time data to get an up-to-date picture of your inventory. You will give accurate information to your customers because you will know where every product is and how much of it you have.
There’s Always a Solution to Every Problem
As the manager of a distribution industry business, you must be a problem solver. You not only want to make your job easier as well as your employees, but you do everything you can to provide the best service to your customers as is possible. And with the right technology, that’s possible. If you want to learn how the right warehouse management system can improve your warehouse, we have the answers. Just call our experts and will talk to you about your system and then make suggestions about how to improve it. We’ll also offer you a demonstration so you can see how technology can drastically improve your systems.