Surprising Tips to Improve Warehouse and Distribution Management

Talk to any two warehouse and distribution experts and you’ll get two unique perspectives on what’s best to keep a warehouse running like clockwork. Some inventory management experts promise that if you use their system, formula, or method, you’ll be a champion at warehouse management.

The truth is that your team isn’t going to be using formulas, books, or secret methods to calculate goods in and out of inventory. Warehouse and distribution management is both an art and a science, liberally sprinkled with tons of hard work.

Mindover Software offers a whitepaper called 5 Tools for Inventory Management that has great insights into the whole warehouse and distribution management dynamic. Download it free from our website now.

What Warehouse and Distribution Teams Need

Your warehouse and distribution team is likely juggling myriad tasks as you read this. They’re keeping inbound shipments from piling up on the receiving dock, tracking customer orders that needed to ship yesterday, and answering inquiries from staff.  In order to do this and more, they need information, tips, and techniques that offer a solid approach to inventory management without the jargon.

An ERP system such as Acumatica ERP that infuses inventory management software and tracking offer another common sense-based approach to managing a warehouse. With the right ERP and inventory systems in place, you’ve got the data upon which to build a sound plan for the day’s activities. Adding Acumatica ERP and an inventory management software to your systems can greatly enhance productivity and efficiency. It’s a tried and true technique for better warehouse and distribution systems.

The Best Warehouse and Distribution Systems Tips

1. Focus on forecasting. A focus on accurate forecasting helps you improve warehouse and distribution systems by ensuring that adequate staff, space, and resources are available to handle orders and shipments. Acumatica ERP can help you improve forecasting with accurate, real-time data, thanks to its cloud-based software.
2. Make only what you can sell. In olden days, factories churned out goods, and sales scrambled to sell them. That method has gone the way of the horse and buggy. Today’s warehouses use sophisticated marketing techniques to assess customer demand so that they can make only what they can sell. This cuts down on waste, capital tied up in inventory, packed warehouses, and other problems.
3. Stop making it if you can’t sell it. Acumatica ERP can help you track your sales so that you can assess how well something is selling. If you can’t sell items or they do not sell briskly enough to meet sales goals, then you can make the decision to stop producing that particular item. Without accurate data, it’s difficult to make informed decisions on what to produce and what to scale back.
4. If you can’t stop making it, find a way to sell it. Machinery may be set to make specific items, or you may have a warehouse full of raw materials that would be difficult to resell. In either case, you’ve got to find a way to sell what you’ve made if you can’t stop making it. Your sales and marketing department need to know immediately when such a problem occurs so that they can work together to find a solution.
5. Unsold inventory doesn’t get better. Unsold inventory is like milk; it doesn’t get better with age. Instead, it can become obsolete. It may need special care during storage, and it can take up valuable inventory space that could be put to far better use. Use your ERP system to adjust production so that inventory levels never get to the point where you’re wondering how in the world you’re going to sell older inventory to make way for new items.

With software such as Acumatica ERP, you’ve got data to help you make sound decisions around your inventory so you can manage it better.

Mindover Software

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