As you sell online, you store large amounts of inventory in your warehouse. You partner with a supplier and start sourcing the products. When the negotiations and terms of the agreement are laid, the products finally start arriving in your warehouse. You put them in one corner. You partner with another manufacturer for a different line of products. When they physically arrive, you somehow make space from the earlier inventory and adjust them. But, then you receive an order and can’t find a particular product in your warehouse. And this is precisely why you need warehouse slotting.
From the above scenario, you might have got a faint picture of what warehouse slotting stands for. Most sellers consider their warehouse as an inventory dumping ground. They keep the products lying there without any organization. This makes the routine tasks much more difficult. As a result of which the business suffers.
The Impact of Your Warehouse Experience
Optimizing the warehouse space can be more important than you think. Ideally warehouses have this image that they are primarily built for storing inventory. While this is correct, it doesn’t mean you leave it as it is. Remember that it is the same warehouse from where you have to pick, packs and ship your products.
Therefore, if you don’t invest in organizing and optimizing the space of your warehouse, your efforts are bound to get wasted. Consider the example given below-
- Supposed that you sell gift items on your website and provide a delivery within the next day. You are marketing your business well and at the same time doing everything right to garner engagement in your business. Your efforts start paying off and you start receiving orders.
- As this happens, the very first thing you do is to pick the product from your warehouse for packing. Once you pack the product, you will assign a courier to it and finally dispatch it.
- But, the moment you try to find the product, you cannot. Because you don’t know where it is located. Therefore, you spend an incessant amount of time finding it in your warehouse. What this does is delays your dispatch time.
- After 48 hours you are able to find your product. You then pack it and assign a courier partner. The courier finally comes to pick the product from yoru warehouse.
- Finally, after the transit period, your product is delivered to the customer.
But, remember that you were selling gift items? And more essentially you mentioned the delivery timeframe as next day on your website. Therefore, when the product arrives at the customer’s doorstep after 3 days, they refuse delivery. Alas! Your order is shipped back to your warehouse.
Such situations are pretty common in an online business. And the main cause is the lack of warehouse slotting. Had you spent time organizing and sorting your warehouse, this would not have happened. The delay in the dispatch time led to a huge loss for your business. And when this happens over time again and again, you can imagine the loss in revenue and reputation.
What is Warehouse Slotting?
While warehouse slotting can have a huge impact on your business it is also important to understand what it is. Warehouse slotting is quintessentially a practice where you optimize the space in your warehouse.
This is done to improve the efficiency of your warehouse and ensure the movement of goods. Warehouse slotting is not just the placement of goods in one particular place. For example, if you are placing winter garments on one side of the warehouse and shoes on the other side, it doesn’t necessarily mean you are performing a good enough warehouse slotting.
Instead, it involves designating places in your warehouse for each piece of your product. So, let’s say if you have 10 pairs of sneakers in your inventory, you have a fixed space on the shelf where you keep these. The same goes on with other products.
Warehouse slotting has several benefits for your business. If you think that it isn’t relevant to you because you are running your business from a small room, it’s not what you think. No matter how small your storage space is, you still need to sort your inventory. And this has to be done not only for finding it easily but for visibility, and quality measures.
In other words, warehouse slotting is a way to keep your inventory more sorted and organized. It helps you fulfill your commitments to the customer and establish your reputation as credible.
How is Warehouse Slotting Relevant?
Warehouse slotting is relevant because it has tangible benefits for your business. Regardless of the size of your ecommerce store, there are some parameters that will define it. These are-
- Your shipping costs
- Delivery timeframe
- Quality of your inventory
- Customer satisfaction
So, if you miss out on even any one of the parameters, there are chances that you have a bad reputation for your business. Therefore, warehouse slotting is something you need to consider undoubtedly for your business.
There are two major types of warehouse slotting that you can implement. These are-
Standard or Fixed Warehouse Slotting
When your product has a fixed location in the warehouse, it is termed as standard or fixed warehouse slotting. Make sure that you keep the overall count of your inventory in mind when designating fixed spaces.
Random Slotting
In this type of slotting, there is no fixed space to store your products. Instead, it relies on a process where the different zones of the warehouse are targeted for storage functions. Don’t worry, if the term zone gets you all confused. It simply refers to allocation of spaces in large warehouses. If you are a small business, fixed slotting seems a better option for you.
Why Should You Try Warehouse Slotting?
You know that warehouse slotting can increase the overall value of your business at the same time you also know that it has tangible benefits. Here we give you even more reasons to try warehouse slotting-
Rapid Fulfillment of Orders
When you are using warehouse slotting to take care of your warehouse inventory, you can fulfill orders faster. This is because you precisely know where your inventory is. You know the shelf and area of the warehouse where you’ve kept it or designated a space for it. So, when you receive an order, you can immediately pick up the product from here. Thus, you can dispatch faster, and as a result of which you can deliver your products rapidly to your customer’s doorstep.
Quality Check on Inventory
with warehouse slotting, you waste less costs on fixing damaged inventory. Alternatively, when your products are arranged well in the warehouse, there are less harms to them. Sometimes piles of lying goods can attract pests and even rodents, this can spoil your inventory. But, when you sort it out, the chances of damage become very scarce.
Better Use of Storage Capacity
Optimizing your storage space can be one of the best decisions for your business. You start using the storage space better and increasing the overall efficiency of your business. This helps you see the proper utility of your warehouse. For example, when you arrange your products with warehouse slotting, you know how much actual space you have left in your warehouse. Most ellers usually are under the impression that they have less space and need to rent another warehouse. Therefore, it saves you from unnecessary costs.
Safety of Staff and Reduced Overall Costs
If your inventory is not arranged, it will obstruct the movement of people. If you have a big warehouse you might need to hire some staff to manage your inventory as well as pick and pack it upon receiving an order. But, when your inventory is just lying here and there it leads to risk for warehouse workers. They might injure themselves. Therefore, with warehouse slotting such risks can be prevented.
How to Get Started with Warehouse Slotting?
If you want to get started with warehouse slotting, the first thing that you need to do is access the inventory you have. Then take a look at all the inventory you have in your storage. Start by organizing your inventory and the warehouse. This will make it very efficient to manage. When you have a cleaned warehouse, not only do you gain more visibility in your business but also get an idea of your fast moving and slow moving inventory.
Try to access your storage capacity based on which assign the slots as per the priority of goods. So, let’s say that if you have the best selling inventory, you can keep it within a more reachable spot in your warehouse. Maybe you can keep it near the packing area so that you can dispatch these products almost within an hour or two of receiving the order. Remember that warehouse slotting is not some fancy tool or technique in ecommerce. It is a habit that you need to cultivate in your business for growth. Lastly, remember to partner with a logistics platform like Dash101 that helps you ship with multiple courier partners from a single platform at the lowest costs.
