To stay competitive, your warehouse facility must get certain factors right because it directly shapes the experience customers have with your company. Your warehouse is a necessary part of your supply chain if you sell goods or products.

It can become a roadblock to customer satisfaction and profitability if it is not efficient and well-planned. Here are some of the reasons why your warehouse may be failing and what you can do about them.

Inefficient processes

Inefficient warehouse processes can make it difficult to locate, package and ship products to customers in time. Customer satisfaction is key for retailers and if your processes in your warehouse aren’t up to scratch, you need to address this if you want to stay competitive. No matter how good your products are, if you fail to provide what customers need, you won’t be successful.

The deployment of Lean Six Sigma principles can offer you rapid improvements in your warehouse performance. When you apply the Lean Six Sigma process to warehousing, you can quickly identify problems and have a statistically driven way to resolving their root causes and discover metrics to drive improvements.

Training courses in Lean Six Sigma are offered at 6Sigma.com. Through Lean Six Sigma, it is possible to optimize and improve all warehouse processes and eradicate waste, variation and errors.

Redundant processes

In the past, warehouse employees were likely to handle a product several times and this tendency can linger on in the current processes. Your warehouse is only as good as the employees who work there and how efficiently you use your labor.

One notable redundant process is where workers pass the same ticket through several hands. Redundant processes consume time and increase labor costs. One of the ways to remove redundant processes and maximize resource utilization is with the use of barcode technology.

Storage and picking issues

Inadequate and inefficient use of storage space is a common problem in warehouses. A good layout maximizes the use of labor and equipment. It improves accessibility to items and their safety. When products aren’t stored correctly or in the optimal place, it makes the picking process ineffective.

The more time pickers spend looking for and putting away products, the less time they will spend picking. Pickers may end up picking the wrong products, which can add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost profits.

Using Six Sigma can help you to document and visualize the amount of time a worker spends searching instead of picking. With this knowledge, you can improve storage and picking efficiency and reduce handling costs.

Lack of inventory management

When inventory is not managed properly, it is hard for your warehouse to function efficiently. It causes problems of improper stock levels and buildups of obsolete inventory. Fluctuations in demand can also be a major problem. Managing inventory effectively is important to deal with variations in supply and demand. Doing this effectively requires timely and accurate information.

Inaccurate stock information causes low productivity, increased expenses and lost revenue. Automated systems can offer accurate real-time information about stock levels and composition. They can help to improve inventory traceability and tracking.

Defects and variability

Any convoluted, complex process opens the door for human or technical errors. When products are defective, this causes waste and decimates profits. Lean Six Sigma can streamline processes, thereby decreasing defects and variability. This ensures an efficient flow of quality goods from your company to your customers.

Large amounts of non-value added time may be required to manage your processes and by integrating automated systems into your warehouse operational strategy, you can save time and significantly reduce errors.