If you’re from the warehouse industry, you probably know that your business is liable to many threats, especially if your business process overseas shipments of items. Warehouse security is a tough tightrope to walk, and increasing it often feels overwhelming. There’s a need to protect the company and products by setting the proper tone and culture in order that workers don’t feel like you’re always accusing them of something.
Spot the theft
Awareness is that the key to knowing if theft is occurring or is close to happening. If you’re not conscious of what’s happening around your warehouse, it can suffer big losses daily. Some advice given below may convince you to be an important indication for you to prevent Warehouse theft.
- Mismatch of your stock levels and your sales records.
- Staff rumors suggest theft is taking place.
- Certain team members avoid taking their annual leave.
- Important invoices are missing or appear as duplicates rather than originals.
- Stock is constantly found near exits or loading bays.
Therefore, it’s better to implement warehouse theft prevention measures to avoid such things.
Stop the theft
The two most important warehouse theft prevention measures are:
Implement Warehouse Technologies
Your first step to counter warehouse theft is being aware and having access to data. These technologies below can allow you to instantly find errors in records and track overall productivity.
Implement Warehouse Management System (WMS) – Advanced WMS can help you track your stocks in real-time and detect missing items. This increases the amount of information you have over your stock, which can lead to a reduction in theft.
Mobile Technologies & Wearables – These warehouse technologies, when integrated with a WMS, can help you inspect your warehouse by having access to data anywhere in the facility.
Limit access to stock in your warehouse
Do you know when to reorder inventory? If you don’t have a relatable plan for reordering, you may waste money on buying products that you simply won’t sell or losing sales orders you can’t fulfill. Assign minimum and maximum nos for all the items. The exact values will differ between products supported by how well each one sells. If you’ve got various sizes, you’ll have to go for minimum and maximum values for each and every size, too, because some sizes will sell faster than others. Minimum numbers refer to the lowest amount you can have in your stock to make the sales you need before new items come from your supplier. The maximum amount is to how much your warehouse can safely hold the items by utilizing space, and money on excessive inventory.
How a MetaWMS- Warehouse Management System helps to prevent warehouse theft
Bin: Organize your warehouse by assigning items to bins, the smallest unit in the warehouse’s logical structure. Bin assignment is done according to the item journals or directly to the document lines (does not apply to order lines).
Cycle Counting: Manage cycle counting, a basic method of verifying inventory record data used to maintain and increase inventory accuracy. Set up cycle counting on the item or SKU level.
License Plating: Easily track entire pallets, boxes, or containers of mixed items including mixed lot/serial numbers.
Internal Picks and Put Away: Create picks and put-away orders for internal purposes, without using a source document (such as a purchase order or sales order). For example, pick items for testing or put away production output.
Stock-Keeping Units: Manage stock-keeping units (SKUs). Identical items with the same item number can be stored in different locations and managed individually at each location. Add cost prices, replenishment, manufacturing information, and so on, based on the location.
For more information about how to implement Warehouse Management System for your warehouse to prevent them from theft contact us today at MetaOption.