Warehouse Stock Management: What It Is & How Does It Help?

A warehousing unit houses many assets and inventory ready to be shipped off to customers. Without an excellent managerial team, the stock in warehouses piles up without any distinctive segregations, leading to chaos and delays. To ensure timely deliveries and retained stock health, major warehouse stock management methods and warehouse security solutions are adopted.

A brief guide to warehouse stock management

Q1. What is stock management?

Stock refers to the goods and commodities stored in a warehouse that must be shipped off to customers. These products are usually consumable (usable) as it is and does not require any processes.

With varying sorts of products being stored in one warehouse, specific stock management procedures must be followed for their quality maintenance.

These might include tracking stock movement inside the premises and regulating their inbound and outbound activity. For retail stores that manage their stock-keeping units (SKUs), the point of sale (POS) system plays an important role. These provide an overview of current stock, as well as the cost of goods sold.

Storing goods with respect to their pallets and aisles ensures that similar products or those bought as a pair are kept close to one another.

Stocks are also stored depending on which products leave the storehouse first. Following the FIFO rule (First In First Out), goods that enter the warehouse first are the ones that are shipped out first. According to the LIFO rule (Last In First Out), goods that enter the warehouse last are the first to be shipped off.

Q2. Stock management as part of inventory management ?

A warehouse stores more than just finished goods. As a storage unit, warehouses are often used to store different types of machinery, raw materials, commodities that still require processing. The proper managerial activities performed henceforth are called inventory management.

On the other hand, stock management is a minor part of inventory management, referring simply to the proper storage, movement, and transportation of finished products.

Q3. Types of warehouse stock management ?

Generally, warehouse stock management can be done in two ways; perpetually and periodically.

Perpetual Stock Management refers to using electronic tracking solutions like Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and barcoding for the proper storage and movement of commodities. Intelligent sensors installed across the warehouse premises scan the barcodes and identify the correct placement for the goods. This type of stock management is especially beneficial in massive warehouses or manufacturing sites where manual tracking of assets is impossible.

Periodic Stock Management, also called physical stock management, is a set of procedures conducted manually. While this is an integral part of stock management, incorporating this methodology for daily operations can be excessively time-consuming and may give way to errors. While smaller warehouses and retail enterprises can use this method to manage their stock, it is inefficient for larger organizations.

However, stock management in more enormous warehouses and organizations is an amalgamated methodology combining both perpetual and periodic stock management. While perpetual stock management is carried out to keep track of daily stock movements, periodic stock management is conducted half-yearly or yearly.

How does warehouse stock management help erase operational barriers and improve customer satisfaction (CX)?

Enterprises that invest in third-party warehouses or manage their own storage units tend to depend on proactive solutions for efficient management. These solutions or software enable users to keep their premises in check while continuously tracking their stocks. A lot goes into managing supplies, stocks, and inventory, from keeping balanced records across multiple sites to ensuring timely deliveries to customers.

Warehouse stock management includes all those activities undertaken by enterprisers for the maintained quality of the commodities that must be shipped forth.

1. Track stocks in real-time

Warehouse stock management solutions are equipped with IP cameras and smart sensors that begin tracking products when they enter the warehouse premises. The barcode or tag associated with the product enables employees to know precisely where to place the commodity. Intelligent sensors installed at the inbound and outbound docks scan these items – one confirming the product’s entry and the other confirming its dispatch.

2. Communication across multiple sites

The larger an enterprise, the greater will be its need for storage. As organizations expand, they tend to take on more than one warehousing unit, giving them more space for storage and allowing them to reach a broader geographical scope with more time to spare.

Stock management solutions bring all these sites together in terms of their data pool. With a unified platform solution, users can monitor their stock and inventory across multiple locations simultaneously. Depletion of stock in one warehouse can easily be communicated to other facilities with such a solution, reducing the possibility of products being out-of-stock.

3. Atmospheric control inside storage units

When it comes to storing assets in a warehouse, one must take certain precautions. While being mindful of the sustainability of the products, the storage units need to have pre-decided temperature settings and mechanisms to keep accidents under control. Temperature and humidity sensors track changes in the storehouse and notify employers of such unprecedented changes. Any detection of the presence of fire and smoke also get recorded, analyzed, and generates notifications in real-time to ensure no large-scale damage occurs.

4. Quality check and proper storage

Intelligent sensors on edge devices have damage detection capabilities that enable employees to separate damaged goods from batches to be discarded or recycled. The rest of the products can then be stored in their respective SKUs allowing employees to find palettes easily, even with hundreds of batches being stored in the warehouse.

How well employees follow through with their standard operating procedures and their treatment of stored goods also plays a vital role in managing warehouse stocks.

5. Timely shipment and delivery

For the timely departure of commodities from a warehousing unit, their proper placement is an essential requirement. Finding where a product is placed without any records or unstructured ones can be highly time-consuming, leading to delivery delays. The warehouse stock management solution with its intelligent sensors tracks the movement of goods across the site. These sensors and IP cameras enable employers to keep continuous tabs on the employees and the warehouse’s overall performance, ensuring that all operations are facilitated on time.

Warehouse stock management mechanisms ensure that high-quality products are shipped off to customers for timely delivery. With communication between multiple facilities that are scattered across geographies, the mechanism removes limitations of distance. Commodities being preserved at the proper environmental conditions inside the warehousing premises and delivered on time lead to enhanced customer satisfaction.

Conclusion

Warehouse stock management consists of tracking and storing commodities until they must be dispatched to customers. Maintaining specific standards of quality, products, and performance ensures that all internal warehouse operations are carefully orchestrated.

With multiple warehouses under the jurisdiction of enterprises, a need for an intelligent mechanism that allows visibility, communication, and business intelligence across all sites is crucial.

IGZY’s AI-enabled warehouse management solution will tremendously improve your warehouse stock management SOPs, safety measures, security practices, and overall site performance.

Ask for your demo today.