An efficient warehouse maximizes its space, streamlines its operations, and promotes productivity among its workers. When a warehouse runs efficiently, customers get their shipments on time and the company’s bottom line stays safe. Even when a warehouse is consistently making customers happy with on-time and accurate shipments, there are still operational shifts to make that can enhance a warehouse’s productivity.
The typical warehouse has a considerable amount of activity going on at any given time, which means there’s always an opportunity to improve productivity. If you’re looking to streamline your existing processes and look for opportunities to maximize productivity, MetaWMS- Advanced Warehouse Management System helps you to improve warehouse efficiency & productivity with the integration of Dynamics 365 Business Central.
The following are some strategies manufacturers can take to improve warehouse management productivity today and grow more resilient in the process:
Warehouse Layout Optimization
A properly designed warehouse is conducive to efficient operations and encourages maximum productivity, it’s design addresses common operational challenges like shipping and receiving bottlenecks, lost inventory, unsafe storage practices, and lengthy picking times. An efficient warehouse should follow a layout based on sales volume. Using your order reports from your warehouse management system (WMS), your management team can determine which are the fastest moving goods and position those closest to the receiving and shipping areas.
Accurate Item Locations
One of the most consistent pain points we hear from e-Commerce business owners is, “I just don’t know what’s in my warehouse.” MetaWMS, give you precise physical locations for each of your products. That way, pickers can know precisely where to find specific products. The result is faster, more consistent processing times, and better customer experiences.
Precise Pick Lists and Pick Routes
Once you’re confident of all your item locations, you can move on to this next step. A quality WMS allows you to generate pick lists contingent upon item location. MetaWMS will even create a pick route, highlighting the most efficient path through the warehouse to pick all required items without retracing steps.
Focus on License Plating
Most of the warehouses continue to use outdated inventory management processes for a large amount of material handling. Whereas, manual inventory tracking is a time-consuming process that requires a large amount of labor, effort, and operating costs. By using MetaWMS, you can facilitate license plating and make your warehouse business much more efficient with modern warehouse management system integration. With MetaWMS, you can create new license plate records in multiple ways and define the items in each record.
Implement a Custom Replenishment Strategy
A warehouse’s replenishment processes are often a work in progress. Many managers try different replenishment approaches to discover what works best and what’s most efficient based on sales volume and the category of goods they carry. Regardless of whether you replenish your stock daily, monthly, or whenever you have downtime, replenishment practices should always be based on the information your WMS can provide.
One of the most useful tools your integrated MetaWMS has the ability to automatically re-order specific SKUs. You can configure the WMS so that when specific SKUs reach a given sales threshold, it automatically triggers a replenishment. That way, your warehouse always maintains a steady stream of inventory without the risk of backorders piling up or goods sitting for too long and incurring unnecessary carrying costs.
Use the Latest Warehouse Technology
If you manage a large warehouse or multiple facilities, you know that organization and timely communication can be a challenge. However, you can track your inventory in-house and en route to its destination with the help of the latest warehouse management software (WMS). A cloud-based WMS, MetaWMS can give you real-time warehouse analytics, automate scheduling and accounting processes, track inventory and streamline communication all from a secure central hub with the integration of Dynamics 365 Business Central.
To learn more about MetaWMS, reach out to our team today for a live demo.