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  • What is warehouse management
  • Warehouse management process
  • Warehouse arrangement & set-up
    • Warehouse location management
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    • Lean warehouse management
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  • Warehouse management system
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Table of Contents

  • What is warehouse management
  • Warehouse management process
  • Warehouse arrangement & set-up
    • Warehouse location management
    • Warehouse layout
    • Inventory management
    • Safety management
  • Warehouse operations management
    • Lean warehouse management
    • Putaway Process
    • Order lead time
  • Warehouse fulfillment
    • Warehouse picking
    • Warehouse packing
    • Warehouse shipping
  • Warehouse technology and barcode scanning systems
  • Warehouse management system
  • Warehouse management template

What is lean warehouse management? Definition and examples 

Lean warehouse management is the process of developing warehouse operations in such a way as to bring resource consumption to a minimum without sacrificing productivity.

In other words, lean warehouse management aims to ensure your team never uses more resources than they need to when completing a specific task.

Adopting a lean approach to warehouse management can allow you to accomplish a number of things, such as:

  • Ensuring optimal use of storage space at all times
  • Minimizing touchpoints and movement of inventory and team members as products move through your warehouse
  • Avoiding overstocking and stockouts
  • Reducing bottlenecks that cause downtime at certain stages of operations
  • Simplifying (read: not overcomplicating) the entirety of your warehouse operations
“Going lean” requires that your warehouse team adopt the 5S methodology to operations. 

The original “five S’s” referred to five Japanese words — Seiri, Seiton, Seiso, Seiketsu, and Shitsuke — which have been translated into English as:

  • Sort
  • Streamline
  • Shine
  • Standardize
  • Sustain

Each “S” is essential for optimizing your overall warehouse processes to the point of truly being considered lean operations.

Sort

Sort refers to defining both the necessary and unnecessary processes and use of resources throughout your warehouse.

The goal is to understand specifically which aspects of your warehouse operations are holding your team back from reaching their full potential. Identifying these areas is the first step toward working to optimize them — or to eliminate them completely.

Note that, at this stage, you’re simply identifying and sorting these areas appropriately. While it may be tempting to start fixing certain issues once you’ve identified them, it’s important to focus on unearthing all areas in need of improvement before moving on to the next stage.

Streamline

Here is where you’ll start optimizing your various warehouse processes — and doing away with operations that hinder your team’s efforts in any way.

Eliminating superfluous processes should be your first order of business. If you can get rid of certain parts of your workflow without sacrificing productivity levels (and, ideally, while improving productivity levels), you absolutely need to do so.

Streamlining also ensures your warehouse team can complete their essential tasks efficiently. There are a number of possible ways to do this, such as:

  • Maximizing the accessibility of most-used inventory and essential resources
  • Improving warehouse navigability with an intuitive layout, accompanied by proper signage
  • Placing team members in the best possible positions to complete their assigned tasks

Shine

A dirty or cluttered warehouse isn’t conducive to productivity. (Even worse, a warehouse in ill-repair will almost certainly present a number of safety hazards.)

That said, you’ll need to ensure your warehouse is kept as clean as possible. This means:

  • Building cleanup processes into your overall warehouse workflow
  • Ensuring cleaning materials are easily and quickly accessible
  • Placing trash receptacles of appropriate size throughout warehouses

No matter how intuitive and accessible your warehouse is “on paper,” it will all be for naught if the actual warehouse is unkempt. A spotless and accessible warehouse, on the other hand, enables maximum productivity on the part of your team.

Standardize

Now is the point where you’ll begin developing concrete procedures and protocols for your warehouse team to follow at all times. These standardized procedures should include contingent workflows to be followed when things don’t go according to plan.

More than just developing these processes, team members must understand these processes and be able to follow them. 

Some key ways to make this happen include:

  • Providing structured training to all warehouse staff members
  • Displaying highly-visible signage illustrating specific protocols
  • Creating individualized workflow documentation for each part of your warehouse team

Sustain

Sustaining productivity demands equal parts adherence to existing protocols and continuous improvements over time.

It’s a balancing act. While you’ll likely have eliminated a number of obvious operational pitfalls already, you’ll eventually need to dig deeper.

Sustaining your approach to lean management involves:

  • Conducting formal and informal assessments with individuals as well as teams
  • Soliciting feedback from your team members on a regular basis
  • Incentivizing adherence to protocols as well as providing of feedback

Lean warehouse management is all about maximizing output while minimizing resource consumption. By adopting the 5S approach throughout your warehouse, your teams will always be able to work to their highest possible capacity.

 

Read next

What is the putaway process? Clear answers on warehouse intake

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