One of the biggest challenges you may have with maintaining your Warehouse Supplies is organizing them. It might not be easy to keep everything in one place and on one list, especially if you have a lot of products or materials to store. Here are tips on keeping your warehouse supplies organized so that they can be more accessible and ready for when you need them.
Inventory System
An excellent way to organize your warehousing supplies is to create an inventory system. This helps when you have to search for something specific because now you don’t need to remember which office cupboard it was stored in; look at the inventory system.
To do this, you would write down each item in the warehouse and its location within the building and any other relevant information such as who owns it, why it belongs there, etc. By writing this down, you will also work out where items are located if they haven’t been used after a while. An inventory can also tell you when you run out of things, letting you know when you need to get more.
Use Heavy Duty Plastic Storage Bins
If you want to make sure all of your items stay organized, you can use heavy duty plastic storage bins. Coming in all shapes and sizes, you can use different bins to store all types of products or materials. The fact that they’re heavy-duty also means that they’re much more durable so they should be able to last much longer than other container types out there, such as plain boxes or wooden crates which are vulnerable to things like moisture or the weather. They often come in sets of three, though larger ones may come in six-packs. The smaller boxes would be ideal for storing things like screws and bolts. Larger bins would be perfect for storing general tools and equipment.
Use a Color Coding System
When looking through your stock, it’s easy to forget what some of your most commonly used items are or what categories they belong in. A simple way around this problem is to use color-coding. For example:
- Yellow – General tools and equipment
- Blue – Heavy-duty storage bins
- Magenta – Office cups and trays
- Green – Small tools
- Red – Large tools
- White – Paper goods and stationery (this can include paper towels, pens, pencils, whiteboards, etc.)
- Black – Furniture/fittings.
Review Your Floor Plan
One of our favorite ways to keep our warehouse supplies organized is by reviewing our floor plan before new items arrive. We always try to ensure that we know exactly where everything is and what type of storage bin it needs.
Once we have done this, we put it into the fitting room and then file off the storage box and place it into another appropriate cupboard according to its size. This makes it easier when searching for particular items later.
Keeping your warehouse supplies sorted in this manner not only ensures that everything stays appropriately organized but it also means that you won’t end up losing anything.
Kara Masterson is a freelance writer from Utah. She graduated from the University of Utah and enjoys writing and spending time with her dog, Max.
