How to Make the Most Out of Your Warehouse Space

Warehouses tend to fill up quickly with stock, especially during peak seasons. While more stock means a greater potential to sell, crowded warehouses usually lead to a few major problems, and since not every warehouse owner can just up and spend a ton of money expanding or buying a new, larger building, something has to be done about the lack of available space.

When a warehouse is overcrowded with stock, productivity not only decreases but it also creates a hard to ignore safety hazard for workers. None of this adds up to good tidings during the holiday season.

Thankfully, there are a lot of ways that warehouse managers can increase the size of their warehouse (not literally) by maximizing the use of the space that is available to them. This, along with a few other inventory-reducing tricks, can be a huge help during the times when your warehouse is particularly packed with inventory.

Start Thinking Vertical

When space in the warehouse starts to run low, consider taking a look upwards for your solution. Just like a modern city, where architects and engineers have been able to fit more people into smaller geographic locations, you too can fit more inventory into a small warehouse by stacking up.

Whether you choose to use a pallet rack, industrial shelving or you to get the job done by stacking your pallets, your solution may certainly lie in the height limit of your building.

Opt for a Redesign

If you don’t have the money to expand, a redesign of your warehouse is a cheaper way to add some more space. Depending on the current layout of your warehouse, you could consider adding a mezzanine.

If that is still not in your budget, try some of these solutions:

• Use double deep pallet racks

• Place racks over the doors of your dock area

• Use outdoor or temporary storage containers

Keep Better Metrics

Sometimes the problem has nothing to do with the physical limitations of your warehouse. Instead, the problem may be that you are bringing in too much product. This doesn’t mean that you have to sacrifice business because you don’t have the proper amount of product on hand, but it may be that you just have more than you need at this particular moment.

This easiest way to see if this is a problem is to keep better track of your metrics. How much stock did you go through in this same month last year? Did you have enough of certain products? Did you need fewer boxes of others? These are all questions that data analytics from previous years can answer for you. That way, you can better estimate how much product you need to have on hand, rather than bringing in extra just to be sure.

Upgrade Your Equipment

No matter how you decide to make the most of your space, make sure that your equipment is up to date. Buying new pallet racks and storage shelves can help you make the most out of your limited warehouse space. Give us a call to discuss all of your storage needs.