Warehouse Planning Guide
What is your plan for your warehouse or distribution center?
It is important to have a plan for your warehouse or distribution center. It allows you to look forward and make decisions about the direction for your operation. It also allows
you to look back and remember why certain decisions were made and the conditions under which they were made.
A plan is a course of action you have decided upon for the future. A simple plan would be to define what is being handled from where to where and when. From there, you will be able to define who will and how it will be handled.
Is your warehouse plan collaborative?
Deciding on a way to handle product in your warehouse can be a team venture. The people who will use equipment to store, move and handle products will have ideas that might be very valuable. Suppliers, customers, supervisors, I.T., accounting, safety can all play a role in helping create your plan for your warehouse.
Questions to ask when building the warehousing and distribution plan:
- Looking into the future, what are the strategic plans for the company?
- How many SKUs will the company distribute this year, in 5 years?
- How many customers will you service this year and in 5 years?
- Will order sizes increase or decrease in the future?
- What is the growth rate for sales this year and forecasted out 5 years?
- Will the company grow through acquisition or incrementally?
- How are you currently handling products?
- What works?
- What doesn’t work?
- How many people pick product?
- How many people in your warehouse replenish?
- How many people in your shipping/receiving ship?
- How many people in your shipping/receiving receive?
- How many orders per day do you handle?
- How many lines per order do you handle on average?
- How many pieces per line do you pick?
- How will that change over the next 5 years?
What other questions should we be asking to create a plan for a warehouse? Please comment below.