Warehouse Assessment

Warehouse Assessment & Operations Assessment

Every business continually feels the pressure to reduce warehouse and distribution costs and improve customer service. A warehouse benchmarking study we recently conducted reveals that average warehouse costs are 4.78 % of Annual Net Sales. 

Improving productivity, efficiencies, and product workflow in all departments will directly reduce labor, occupancy, and shipping expenses. It also has a positive effect on customer service levels and inventory control. In order to improve you must constantly assess and refocus improvement efforts in various areas of the distribution center. This is where a warehouse assessment or distribution center audit comes into play. 

We assist our clients by conducting an objective, independent warehouse assessment to identify all areas of potential improvement. We corroboratively work with our clients to develop well-focused actionable, detailed recommendations to implement industry best practices.  We interview distribution center leads, managers and supervisors to better understand the current processes and issues being faced and combine them with what we observe during the site visit. 

These recommendations can be immediately implemented into your current distribution center or into a future location. Our recommendations will boost your productivity, increase efficiencies and improve product workflow in your distribution center; all which can reduce your overall warehouse expenses and cost 10% to 20%. 

We focus the scope of the operations assessment on areas that you identify as needing to be improved upon. We conduct an onsite visit to understand your company culture, product mix, order profiles, warehouse management system (and peripheral systems), etc. used to support the operation, and your service levels guaranteed to the customer.

During the warehouse assessment, we work with the client to: 

• Audit the warehouse management systems and processes and develop recommendations throughout the four walls warehouse functions.  We review the supply chain inbound flow, vendor compliance processes and receiving, quality, put away and systems for areas of improvement.
• From the outbound customer order process perspective, we look for ways to improve order and return turnaround times in facilities. Systems and process improvement includes forward replenishment, pick, pack confirmation, shipping, returns and inventory control, cycle counting and tracking. 
• Provide the best practice processes and system functions to serve multiple channels: including e-commerce, direct marketing including catalog, wholesale and retail “brick and mortar” stores.
• Evaluate and make recommendations using industry best practices to improve operating processes, space utilization, inventory control accuracy, productivity and efficiencies and facility layout to improve product workflow. 
• Where necessary, we can assist you with reorganizing the warehouse floor for more efficient process flow.  We can also provide CAD drawing for racking, conveyors, automation, and sortation etc. showing flow and work area planning.
• Review how operations are affected by part-time labor ramp up, training and peak seasonal volumes. We also review operations management and directors and their effectiveness and skill sets.
• Consider any future changes and growth to the business and how it will affect the distribution center’s operations.
• Develop, modify or expand existing functionality of warehouse management systems including bar code strategies.
• We will review your internal KPIs and benchmarking and let you know how you compare to other companies in the industry. 
• Benchmark your operations against similar companies using metrics, KPIs and cost per order data collected during the warehouse assessment.
• With our partners, review your inbound and outbound freight costs and determine if savings can be achieved through renegotiation. 

All of our recommendations for improvement are delivered back to you in a detailed, actionable report that will be your roadmap for immediately implementing these solutions developed through conducting the operations assessment.