What is warehouse management? 6 most effective ways to manage warehouses in 2023

Today, it's not just for businesses

agreement, but any store needs strict and effective warehouse management . A good warehouse management process ensures that supplies are always sufficient to meet customer needs, helping to optimize costs and enhance business performance. Let's join 1C Vietnam to learn more about the definition, benefits and basic warehouse management process below.

1. What is warehouse management?

Warehouse Management is work directly related to goods stored in the warehouse including monitoring, managing, arranging, controlling the amount of imported and exported goods, etc. Warehouse management helps businesses businesses save costs, effectively use resources and increase revenue.

2. Outstanding benefits of warehouse management activities

Warehouse management helps managers achieve business efficiency in the face of market fluctuations. Below are important benefits for businesses when focusing on warehouse management processes:

2.1. Control inventory effectively

Regular inventory management helps ensure that inventory levels are maintained at optimal levels. Excess inventory causes excess of certain types of items, which affects unnecessary storage costs. Furthermore, businesses with shortages of goods can lead to loss of business opportunities and failure to meet customer needs. Optimizing inventory is the most important job in warehouse management.

2.2. Reduce storage costs

When managing warehouses effectively, businesses can minimize costs related to inventory storage such as land purchase costs, labor costs, packaging, preservation and transportation. Saving these costs helps businesses reduce costs and increase profits effectively.

2.3. Always control inventory

Items in the warehouse are carefully arranged and managed in an orderly manner, ensuring that goods are easily accessible and always available to meet customer needs. At the same time, the work of packaging and shipping through distribution channels takes place in a short time. Businesses provide goods promptly and accurately, reducing waiting time and increasing customer satisfaction.

2.4. Increase work efficiency

A well-managed warehouse will help managers improve work efficiency and optimize the process of transporting, arranging, managing, etc. In particular, importing and exporting goods in the warehouse becomes easy. easier, because managers can locate items quickly and ship and order in the shortest time, using the least amount of worker effort.

2.5. Timely detect risk issues

Careful warehouse management processes will promptly detect problems such as damaged goods, shortages, expired goods, or other problems related to product quality. With timely early detection, businesses can solve the problem before it causes major consequences and promptly take appropriate measures to limit bad customer experiences.

2.6. Analyze trends and devise implementation strategies

Warehouse management provides data on inventory quantity, inventory ratio along with monthly business revenue, supply and demand trend information and warehouse performance indicators to help businesses make decisions. doing business properly and accurately. From there, build a medium and long-term strategy for effective warehouse management .

3. Basic warehouse management process

For warehouse management activities to proceed smoothly, businesses need to build a scientific and professional goods management process. Below are the steps to effectively manage inventory:

3.1. Step 1: Enter inventory

Warehouse entry is the first step and also one of the most important steps in the warehouse management process. At this stage, the staff in charge will inventory and compare goods and ensure that they match the quantity in the supplier's delivery note. If an item is damaged during transportation, the consignee will send it back to the supplier to avoid unnecessary damage.

3.2. Step 2: Store

Goods will be warehoused and allocated to predetermined locations. The process of arranging items needs to be highly efficient and accurate, ensuring compliance with storage principles. This phase in particular also helps maximize space allocation, easily track products and minimize travel time.

3.3. Step 3: Export warehouse

In this process, the warehouse department receives a warehouse release request form from the competent department and checks the inventory. If the quantity in stock does not meet the requirements, it is necessary to plan for warehousing. If the quantity is guaranteed, the warehouse keeper needs to quickly prepare a delivery note.

3.4. Step 4: Pack

This is also an important step in the warehouse management process because it directly affects business revenue as well as customer satisfaction. Warehouse keepers need to observe necessary factors including: correct packaging, appropriate packaging materials (especially for fragile items),...

3.5. Step 5: Shipping

Shipping or delivery is the final step in warehouse management . Employees will dispatch orders and ensure that the shipping method is appropriate to get the items to customers. Shipping is only considered successful when the correct product is delivered, at the promised time and of good quality.

3.6. Step 6: Statistics and reporting

After the goods have been released from the warehouse, employees need to prepare a warehouse release report to record the release and update the new inventory quantity. At the same time, warehouse managers also need to make regular reports weekly, monthly, and quarterly to control assigned activities to run smoothly.

4. 6 useful ways to improve warehouse management efficiency that businesses need to know

Below are 6 ways to help businesses improve warehouse management efficiency and build a scientific warehouse import and export process useful for businesses:

4.1. Arrange the most reasonable warehouse location

To manage warehouses effectively, businesses should focus on the most reasonable and optimal warehouse layout solution. Employees can easily leave things in the wrong place, spending a lot of time searching and arranging goods during work. To minimize arising problems, warehouse managers can apply the following solutions:

• Zoning based on picking frequency: This method focuses on frequently picked up items and arranges them at the nearest location, helping to optimize time and effort when employees need to pick up items. Goods with high picking frequency will be placed in easy-to-access areas, avoiding the need to move through multiple areas in the warehouse.

• Sorting based on product groups: When the warehouse has many different types of products, businesses can consider arranging products and items according to relevance. Products of the same type should be placed close to each other. For example, electronic products are in a separate area, food products are in another.

• Sorting based on size: This method focuses on arranging frequently used and large items in the most accessible location. Items that are less frequently used or smaller in size can be placed in more remote areas. This method helps businesses reduce search and retrieval time and optimize storage space.

4.2. Set up barcodes for products in the warehouse

To easily find products on shelves, businesses should use labeling for all items being stored in the warehouse. Currently, many businesses have applied barcodes to manage warehouses and brought very good results. These steps will help businesses easily determine the exact location of products in the warehouse, helping storekeepers save time on ordering and packaging faster and easier.

For example, the barcode of Vinamilk milk product 1 liter box HSD December 22, 2017 SVH12212 shows full information about product group, product name, product properties, capacity and production date.

4.3. Strict control of export and import processes

Checking products before exporting and importing is one of the important steps in effectively managing products in the warehouse. Processes help managers ensure that operations run smoothly, avoiding errors and losses.

To strictly manage this stage, the warehouse manager needs to assign someone to be in charge of checking the quality and quantity of goods. This person needs to have accurate inspection and measurement skills and product knowledge.

4.4. Regular inventory checks help control risks

Periodic warehouse inspection is an important activity that takes place regularly to help compare the actual quantity in the warehouse with the data in the system, to control and provide timely solutions. This brings many benefits to businesses specifically as follows:

Ensure accurate data in the warehouse: Regularly checking the warehouse helps managers identify and fix data errors such as inventory that does not match the data recorded in the system or errors in data entry. The main purpose is to ensure the accuracy of numbers and reliability of data in the warehouse.

Detection of deficiencies and loss of goods: Employees have the opportunity to check each item and compare it with the recorded quantity. Thanks to that, they can early detect cases of missing or missing goods, helping managers prevent and handle them promptly, avoiding property loss.

Plan re-orders accurately: When knowing the actual amount of inventory in stock, businesses can plan re-orders more accurately to ensure the quantity of goods is always available in stock. Ordering the right quantity at the right time helps businesses avoid shortages or excess inventory, helps optimize warehouse costs and increase business efficiency.

Improve warehouse operational efficiency: Through periodic warehouse inspections, businesses have an overview of warehouse performance such as information on inventory status, frequency of inventory checks, quantity of goods received by the business, etc. This helps businesses optimize warehouse storage structure, warehouse workflow and improve warehouse operational efficiency.

Increase customer satisfaction: Periodic inventory checks help ensure that goods are available and in sufficient quantity to meet customer needs, helping customers feel satisfied and confident with the products and services they receive. supply company.

4.5. Reduce inventory

Inventory comes from items on those shelves that are not business-ready. These slow business items are taking up storage space in your warehouse. The company should take measures to reduce inventories or find other ways to handle them.

4.6. Use software to manage inventory easily

Currently, adapting to the digital transformation trend is an inevitable issue, businesses are choosing solutions to use software to manage goods, resources, and supplies in warehouses. A great suggestion for businesses is 1C:Company Management - comprehensive business management software with many useful features.

Among them, the software stands out with its effective warehouse management features, with the following advantages:

• Supports quick calculation of raw material costs, using many different methods, helping to control costs as well as improve business efficiency.
• Set maximum and minimum inventory limits, provide timely warnings for businesses to make the right decisions, avoid shortages or surpluses of goods.
• Manage inventory information, including properties, serial numbers, units of measure, inventory slots, reserves,...
• Classify goods according to many criteria, serving the process of searching and looking up raw materials/goods of businesses.
• Prepare warehouse documents, including transfer, shipment, inventory, warehouse slips,...
• Create and export intuitive, diverse reports...

With this software, businesses will optimize the warehouse management process, save a lot of time, costs and increase operating productivity.

Above, 1C Vietnam shared information about what warehouse management is, how to effectively manage warehouses for businesses as well as suggestions about 1C:Company Management software to support smart, streamlined warehouse management . Hopefully the above useful information will help businesses gain experience to be able to optimally manage their work.