If you're just starting your own e-commerce website, you may think: "I'll organize my inventory later! Let's launch!" Well, I strongly suggest that you have your products organized before starting because once you launch, you will find that you prefer spending your time on marketing and customer service rather than on organizing your fulfillment operation. Plus, you will save considerable time when fulfilling your first orders and will avoid a ton of possible mistakes. Good organization will provide the following benefits:
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Your Picker/packer will not need to be familiar with the products to fulfill an order. This will guarantee that you can respond to any growth in your business without hassle. Training these employees will be very simple and you won't need to hire skilled workers. Your warehouse will be able to support enough growth in your product catalog for the coming months or years.
- Your organization will be flexible enough to permit quick reorganization between fast-moving products and slow-moving products. How fast a product moves not only depends on the product itself but also on your distribution channels and your efforts in advertising your products. This means that a slow-moving product can become a fast-moving product in a matter of days or months! Flexibility is a critical factor in your organization.
When organizing your storage, there are only a few steps you need to take in order to achieve these results:
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Choose the right shelves or bins to store your products: There are tons of different shelving systems in the market today, so try to choose one that seems like a good compromise between storage space and flexibility for growth. If you mainly have small products, you may also use bin shelving. One upside of this approach is that you won't need to label all of the products individually- you'll simply need to label the bin, which will save you time and labels when you receive new shipments.
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Draw a floor map of your storage: You need to define location codes for each area of your storage. Location codes are usually comprised of different sub-locations in your warehouse: which room it is shelved in, and on which set of shelves, and on which shelf(ie: a product with location code SR1-S5-L5-C2 means the product is located in Storage Room #1 on shelf # 5, in the second column.)This should allow anyone to find any product, even if they're not familiar with how they look. Drawing a floor map is important as it allows new employees to quickly learn the location codes and how to find all of your products. When drawing the map, try to leave room for future growth in order to keep your location codes consistent. Example:
- Identify your products correctly: All companies have their own SKU or product code for their products. This number allows all employees of the company to identify a product by a unique code. Product codes (SKUs) are expressed in a variety of ways; some companies just use sequential numbers, while others use letters that incorporate some information about the product (ie: you can use the first letter(s) of the brand, then the model number etc.)Note that most products now come with a UPC code which also serves as a unique identifier(mainly used in Point Of Sales systems;) however ,it's a long number (12 digits) and most companies prefer to use internal codes that are easier to identify and remember. So, if you're just getting started, you first need to establish a nomenclature for your product code. Then, depending on the type of storage you have, you may want to print labels to put on your products so they can be identified easily. These labels usually include more information like the name, the SKU, the location code, a bar code, and either the date it was received or a code allowing the picker to identify the origin of the product and when it was received.
Once you follow these three steps, you're ready to start picking and shipping orders and you'll be prepared for future growth without hassle!