Are you tired of an unmanageable and overwhelming warehouse? Or perhaps you need to design an optimal warehouse? And how do you start building a warehouse from scratch?
The optimal storage arrangement is achieved with a simple storage system. The first step is the basic layout of your warehouse itself - how your storing units will be positioned. If you have not tried to build a warehouse from scratch before, we recommend that you read through the article first and then absorb the tips and tricks that you can use in the initial phase. And afterwards you can go back to the subsections and go a little more in depth with the optimal solution for your warehouse.
We have tried moving warehouses ourselves 4 times, and we made good use of our experience when we moved to our large warehouse in Glostrup, Denmark, in early 2022. You can see a photo at the bottom of the page from our warehouse. Here are 3 reasons why you should also optimize your warehouse with locations:
- It creates an overview
- It saves time
- It frees up resources
And last but not least: you avoid frustrated employees who are constantly walking around looking for goods in your warehouse.
Below is our guide to organising your warehouse using magnets.
Plan out your storage system!
Start by drawing your warehouse on a piece of paper so that you can plan the placement of racks in order to get the most out of the space and to achieve the most optimal picking routes. You have to take into account whether your shelves are free standing or need to be screwed to the wall. Once you have set up the shelves, it is more difficult to move them around, even if it is only a matter of minor changes in the arrangement. And remember to take into account whether it should be possible to expand with more shelf space on an ongoing basis. If so, then you should also make room for that.
We've chosen free-standing, tall metal racks for our warehouse, and we've chosen a system that we can keep expanding, so we're not locked into a solution that can't be expanded. Every time we expand with new product groups, it is easy to add more storage space with more shelves, so that we not only save time on a daily basis but also when expanding the warehouse. We have put large pallet racks up against the end walls, as they need to be fixed, and as it provides better lighting, because the "heaviest" racks do not take up space in the middle of the warehouse and block the light.
We run a webshop, so we also had to take into account the optimal placement of packing tables and work tables. We recommend placing packing stations close to the warehouse, so that you minimize the number of steps between the two, while at the same time giving a better overview of the warehouse.
Signage and locations
It may seem like a banality and straightforward, but many people often forget the importance of signs and location numbers. If you choose metal racks for your warehouse, you can use magnetic signs for marking both aisle numbers (we use aisles A-H here) and for marking location numbers. A large sign at the end of each row of shelves with a number or a letter helps to create the big overview, and location numbers with marking of shelves and locations are a huge help in creating an overview of the actual location of each individual item.
In addition, we have spent time placing the items in groups that are either similar or complimentary - ie. goods that are often sold together. This means that if our storage system goes down temporarily, we can easily guess where the goods are.
Continuous adjustment and optimization
The work to optimize a warehouse never stops - but that's not a bad thing. If you have done it in a smart way - with magnetic signs for your storage racks - you can easily move your storage boxes and locations around, because they are not tied to anything special but are movable.
There are as many ways to do inventory management as there are companies. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, because you cannot create the optimal solution for everyone as plug and play. But there are some simple rules you can follow for building your storage racks for optimal logistics:
- Name each shelf a consecutive number or letter (eg A, B, C or 1, 2, 3). If you have many aisles with shelves, it can also be advantageous to mix letters and numbers (A1, A2, A3 - and next row: B1, B2, B3, etc.),
- Name each shelf consecutive numbers or letters (we see it mostly used with numbers for shelf numbers, because it is often easier for the employees to count down with numbers instead of with the alphabet),
- Name each box's location on the shelf consecutive numbers or letters (again, we'd recommend numbers here - easier on a day-to-day basis for most people).
Construction of location numbers
You can see a photo of our warehouse above with DYMO labels on magnetic tape for flexible location marking. We have built up location numbers in our warehouse like this:
- Each row has a letter and each shelf has consecutive numbers. Above we show our C rack where we have C1, C2, C3 etc.
- Each shelf has a number. In the example below with the C5 rack, we show shelf no. 5 and 6, which are designated as C5.5 and C5.6
- The last development is placement on the shelves. The focus of the photo is, for example, an item on shelf C5, shelf 5 and location no. 6. It gives location number C5.5-6.
