Warehouses may add additional complexity to the logistics process, but they are an essential tool for shippers, helping them safely store and organize thousands of products for delivery in one convenient location. But when warehouse operations are slow, disorganized, and inaccurate, shipping performance suffers, and compliance challenges can arise, driving up costs and delays that hurt competitiveness.
Powered by the right logistics intelligence and insights from experienced warehouse operations and supply chain professionals, shippers can take steps to improve inventory accuracy and fully comply with regulations—all to spend less, prevent errors, and save time with every shipment.
Increase inventory accuracy to reduce labor needs
Moving products from one link in the supply chain to the next comes with significant risk of damages, losses, shrinkage, and theft. Each of these instances can erode inventory accuracy, causing discrepancies between quantities listed in records and actual stock. Adding an additional link to this chain in the form of large warehouses with numerous loading bays, zoning areas, and disorganized shelves and layouts can create even more inaccuracies, each hampering a shipper’s ability to make informed warehouse decisions.
Many shippers spend considerable time and money hiring personnel in the hopes that additional warehouse coverage will solve their inventory accuracy challenges. But for organizations striving for lasting improvements, consulting with supply chain professionals can transform their approach with an eye for long-term savings and accuracy through key warehouse optimizations.
For example, when a heavy-duty industrial electronics manufacturer wanted to lower costs, increase efficiency, and improve the speed at which goods move in and out of their El Paso distribution center, a dedicated team from CTSI-Global assessed their processes, layout, equipment, and overall warehouse organization. They discovered, among other things, that suboptimal inventory efficiency was significantly inflating costs.
To solve this problem, the team helped increase the manufacturer’s bin-to-bin accuracy to over 99%, while reducing inventory adjustments by 91%—from $940,000 to $85,000—by:
- Designing more effective warehouse workflows
- Establishing and educating the manufacturer on rules for preventing mixed shipments
- Implementing an improved scanning and conveyor belt process
- Introducing cycle counts, eliminating need for annual physical inventories
Ease compliance through expert warehouse management insights
Inefficient warehouse management impacts more than just the ability to locate and ship the right items at the right time—it can also expose shippers to significant compliance risk.
Say a pharmaceutical company stores pills and vaccines in a warehouse where recordkeeping is poor, zoning bays lack standardization, and storage systems don’t exhibit safety procedures like temperature control. In these circumstances, inventory can easily go missing or get damaged. The company would need to replace it, potentially driving up costs, leading to litigation fines, and producing critical delays that jeopardize patient health. What’s more, it becomes easier for malicious entities to steal the medicine or sensitive information, which can trigger regulatory violations.
CTSI-Global’s Supply Chain Consulting team helps mitigate these sorts of risks for shippers across industries by thoroughly examining every area of warehouse operations—from goods receipt to shipping—through the lenses of quality and operations. The team can then provide shippers with in-depth, relevant metrics on compliance risks due to low-quality processes. They can even leverage these insights to recommend and help shippers implement operational improvements that better comply with industry standards and prevent fines.
Refine end-to-end warehouse operations with CTSI-Global
Amid rising global competition and customer expectations, successful warehouse operations mean continually streamlining processes to boost accuracy and perfect regulatory compliance. But without years of specialized, hands-on supply chain knowledge and experience, doing so can be prohibitively challenging.
CTSI-Global’s Supply Chain Consulting team offers a litany of services designed to aid shippers in optimizing warehouse operations, including:
- Process creation and improvements
- Personnel management and training
- Location analysis
- Site selection
- Supplier negotiations, selection, and contracting
- ERP systems knowledge
- Inventory management
- Facility cost management
- Lead-time impact for inbound materials
- U.S. and Mexico import and export operations
Make complicated warehouse management a thing of the past. Contact us to learn more about how our Supply Chain Consulting service can help overhaul your warehouse operations with an eye for boosting accuracy, ensuring compliance, and maximizing returns.
