Every warehouse, at some point or the other reaches a stage where it outgrows its inventory storage space.  Aisles and receiving docks soon get flooded with product materials or boxes, and workers and forklifts have to struggle their way to reach the storage locations. While this may be good news for your business, you could be awaiting a potential mishap to happen.  Moreover, an overtly clogged warehouse can hamper your warehouse productivity! If moving out to a new location is not feasible for you, optimizing the existing storage capacity of the warehouse is what you need to focus on to mitigate safety hazards and enhance productivity.

Here we have discussed 5 tips on how you can enhance your warehouse’s storage capacity.

• Reduce SKU quantities:

More often warehouses are overloaded with SKU quantities of the same product. That is because most purchasing agents stock up products in large quantities to save on money. However, this excess inventory uses up available storage space, blocking the receiving and shipping areas. Instead of stocking too much of inventory, stock them in stage to reduce the impact on the warehouse and productivity.

• Utilize the vertical space

Make use of vertical space of the warehouse to free up floor space for other uses. Employ mezzanine floors and pallet racking systems that use removable and adjustable pallets. This is a great way to store heavy and bulky products. You can gain 25% to 30% of storage space by effectively utilizing the height of the facility.

• Eliminate ‘dead’ inventory

Remove any unwanted inventory that has not been turned out for years. Ideally, one should remove excess inventory within 90-120 days of storing it. However, businesses avoid putting-it off due to commercial reasons. Run a velocity report to see how often the inventories are picked up in a year.  See if you can return the inventories to the vendors, or give to charity or sell them off in a flash-sale. This will free up some storage space and make room for inventories lying in aisles and receiving docks.

• Consider re-configuring the pallet storage density

Assess the physical layout of your warehouse and see if you can make any modification to existing racking system to improve product-flow and congestion. You might also need to take into account things like shipping volumes and peak trends while reconfiguring the existing pallet storage density.

• Narrow the aisle width

If you want to add more racks, then narrow aisle racking would be a great solution. By reducing unnecessary aisle width, you can make better use of floor space and warehouse height.