Warehouse prices across the country are at an all-time high. Unlike other aspects of business management, however, warehouse space is rarely something that you can cut down on, at least not without having a direct limitational impact on the amount of product you can store and sell.
As a result, understanding and planning your warehouse capacity requirements is a fine line that needs to be navigated with care. Too large and you risk wasting money, but too small and you risk limiting your business – here’s how to get it just right.
Basic storage requirements
To start things off, you need to explore your basic storage needs. That means breaking down how you’ll store, move and package various items, considering how many square and cubic feet each of these processes requires.
On top of that, you’ll need to factor in seasonal fluctuations in demand, safety requirements, employee areas such as break rooms and toilets, and any equipment spaces. Some of these will change as time goes by, depending on which storage and loading solutions you choose to go with, but you have to start somewhere.
Space optimisation
Next, it’s important to note that the way you choose to operate your warehouse can have a big impact on space optimisation. In particular, this consists of how you choose to store and then move items around in your warehouse environment.
For example, automated loading solutions from specialist services like Joloda Hydraroll can have a huge impact on space optimisation compared to traditional, more manual loading solutions. As a result, investing in these kinds of solutions can reduce the amount of warehouse space you use, without reducing the amount of items you’re able to store and process.
Using your data
All of these processes need to be informed by as much data as possible. None of the figures you come up with should be a guess, unless absolutely necessary.
If you’re starting a new business and don’t have any primary data related to your operations, then you need to make sure that your predictions are based on closely comparable alternatives.
The implications of getting things substantially wrong can be dire – the expense of switching warehouses could be enormous, with costs coming up everywhere from operational disruptions to moving and reinstalling equipment.
Future-proofing
Lastly, with any kind of warehouse capacity planning process, you need to think about future-proofing your operations from the very beginning.
Regardless of how old and apparently stable your business operations are, you never know if you’ll need to increase or decrease your operational capacity in the near future, and being unable to do so can have disastrous effects.
Make sure that you factor in scalability – even if just on a seasonal basis – so that you’re not left in a tricky situation any time soon.
Planning your warehouse capacity can be tricky, but it’s by no means an unachievable feat. By going through the points listed above, you should be able to maximize the chances that you get things just right.
