It’s not easy to keep an active warehouse under control. You must verify that all of your equipment is in top working order and that all of your personnel are doing their jobs correctly. Even if your to-do list is a mile long, you still need to be organized if you want your warehouse to be successful.

There is a good chance that if your warehouse seems to be underperforming, you may have overlooked something important. If you’ve lost your bearings, we’re here to help get you back on track. Here are a few reasons why your warehouse may be having difficulties and isn’t as efficient as it should be. 

Photo by Tiger Lily

Your Equipment Is Old

How old is your warehouse’s equipment? If your equipment is old and not running well, it can hurt your productivity and efficiency. For example, replacing your old conveyors with brand-new heavy duty conveyor rollers can make a huge difference. 

Your workers won’t have to waste time fixing broken parts or waiting for ages before the machines will work. Updating other important technologies, like warehouse management systems, can also bring productive capacity back to where it was before.

Everything Is In The Wrong Place 

If your workers can never find anything, it’s time to rethink how your warehouse is set up. It’s clear that it’s not working the way it should.

This is one reason why things may not be going well in your warehouse. Use automated systems to keep track of your inventory to solve this problem. Make sure you sort things in a simple and logical way as another way to get organized. Putting things into groups based on size, purpose, and other ways to tell them apart will make it easier for your employees to find what they need. When they can always find things and know where they are – and they know where to put things when they are done with them – things will be a lot more efficient and safer too. 

You’re Not Keeping Track

Do you know who works for you and what they do? What about how many packages you sent out last month? Which shifts work best, and which ones aren’t doing as well as they should? If the person in charge of the warehouse doesn’t know what’s going on, things are likely to go wrong.

Our brains can only hold so much information at once, so it’s normal not to remember everything. However, you should try to keep up with any important events, such as new employees or changes in their roles, performance metrics, and more. This will help you figure out what is working and what isn’t, so you can make the changes your warehouse needs to be successful.

You Don’t Set Performance Goals 

Try to help the team in the warehouse work smarter, not harder. Set attainable goals for the warehouse, send people to warehouse training courses and stay up to date on the latest trends in modern warehouse management. Give your people the software and material-handling tools they need to do their jobs quickly and well.