Warehouse optimization involves taking a detailed look at your existing processes and identifying practical ways to improve warehouse operations, space, and performance, taking into consideration your core business goals, including cost reduction and enhancing customer service.
Discover how warehouse optimization can help retailers, manufacturers, and logistics companies tackle many of their biggest challenges and how a new breed of technologies—including AI, AR, and data analytics—can enhance warehouse operations.
Warehouse optimization is precisely what the term suggests: improving how your warehouse is operated and managed. It includes looking at the warehouse space itself and how it’s organized. It considers areas of inventory management. It also focuses on your employees. Good warehouse optimization solutions provide workers with the tools they need to complete tasks quickly, safely, and efficiently while minimizing errors and reducing stress.
The best warehouse optimization strategies focus on changes that make a real difference on the ground. This includes things like reorganizing your warehouse layout to reduce the amount of time workers spend moving between different areas. It also involves looking closely at core tasks such as picking, packing, and replenishment, and identifying ways to make them more efficient.
A useful starting point for this involves drawing up a workflow for each of your current processes. From this, you should be able to identify the most time-consuming or error-prone tasks (for instance, in picking, where workers must stop what they’re doing to consult paper checklists or fill in forms). These bottleneck areas should be the first things to address as part of your warehouse optimization project.
Technological tools such as automated lifts, warehouse management systems (WMS), and wearable devices can help you transform your warehouse layout. They also allow you to introduce new, streamlined workflows for many of your core warehouse tasks.
As with any operational overhaul, this means your workforce needs to learn and adjust to new procedures. However, the best warehouse optimization solutions can help you address this. For example, TeamViewer’s vision-picking solution places step-by-step instructions directly into the field of view of frontline workers: making warehouse processes less complex and easier to understand.
Tight margins and volatile trading conditions can put pressure on businesses to drive efficiency and reduce overheads. At the same time, they must take action to reduce emissions.
Optimizing warehouse operations puts you at the forefront of achieving these wider business goals. The right warehouse optimization software coupled with streamlined processes helps you lower warehouse operating costs and reduce the pressure on cash flow. It also helps you to do more with less, potentially reducing both your property footprint and your energy requirements.
With multiple sales channels to manage and a constantly evolving product range, warehouse operations must keep up with the needs of the wider business. A warehouse optimization project is your opportunity to bring operations up-to-date and tackle the following challenges:
But over time, processes can change. Bit by bit, some areas can get overstocked while others are underused. Warehouse optimization gives you the chance to rethink and correct this.
For example, a new contract means opening an additional facility and taking on extra staff. Warehouse optimization can open avenues for making better use of what you have already (for instance, by utilizing vertical space or boosting pick rates).
Likewise, slow processes mean a lower dock-to-stock time and fewer orders picked per hour. Warehouse optimization enables you to reduce costs and improve these metrics.
When it happens across the whole team, the lost time adds up quickly. The right warehouse optimization software helps remove these interruptions.
The same goes for error-prone replenishment processes, such as employees placing replenishment batches in the wrong basket. Overhauling your warehouse can contribute to your wider inventory optimization strategy, making it easier to accurately track your inventory.
These are some of the key approaches to optimize your warehouse to achieve lower costs and fewer errors.
Which items are frontline workers required to handle most often?
Consider factors such as order frequency, as well as the type and size of specific items. Using this information, design a floor plan that improves the flow of goods, reduces travel time, and increases space utilization.
If you’re reaching floor capacity, automated vertical lift modules (VLMs) can help you optimize upwards, making it more feasible to store items at higher levels.
When an operator requests an item on the VLM system, a computer-controlled extractor mechanism retrieves the relevant tray automatically.
A warehouse management system (WMS) lets you track inventory and automate warehouse processes. The WMS records incoming shipments using barcodes or QR codes and assigns task lists to individual workers. It can also automatically track stock movement within the warehouse and generate the right shipping labels, invoices, and tracking numbers. It should also sync with your inventory management system so that when an order is shipped or when shelves are replenished, stock-level information is updated accordingly.
One of the main goals of any warehouse optimization project is to increase productivity with fewer errors across all main warehouse tasks. For this, employees need the right information presented in a way that’s convenient for them. This is where augmented reality (AR) comes in. With AR, digital information is superimposed directly into an employee’s field of view using smart glasses. TeamViewer Frontline Pick is an AR solution that provides workers with relevant visual information, guiding them to find and retrieve the items they need with ease.
Warehouse optimization can involve introducing a lot of new technical equipment onto the warehouse floor. Examples include WMS terminals, scanners, and wearables for workers, display units on shelving racks, robotic arms, retrieval shuttles, and lift modules. If an important piece of equipment fails, this can halt your entire operations.
With a remote maintenance solution such as TeamViewer, it becomes a lot easier to keep all these devices up and running. Full remote access, control and remote assistance powered by AR means less time wasted waiting for support staff to arrive at the warehouse. If a problem arises with a particular piece of equipment, support staff can access, diagnose, and fix it instantly.
Trusted by some of the world’s biggest names in logistics, retail, and manufacturing, TeamViewer’s range of solutions can help you optimize your warehouse.
When recruiting new warehouse workers in response to seasonal spikes or sudden demand shifts, TeamViewer Frontline Pick can give relevant, step-by-step guidance to help them reach full productivity as quickly and easily as possible.
TeamViewer Tensor provides a platform for connecting to and maintaining all IT and operational infrastructure across a multi-branch, multi-channel retail business. Remotely access and monitor racking displays, barcode scanners, point-of-sale (POS) terminals, and much more from a single platform.
In a manufacturing setting, warehouse processes often go beyond simple picking and replenishment and require pre-assembly or quality control.
TeamViewer’s guided AR solutions let you use a combination of text, images, diagrams, pointers, and checklists to guide employees through even the most complex warehouse, assembly, and inspection workflows.
In logistics operations, warehouse optimization focuses on streamlining complex fulfillment processes such as load planning, and real-time shipment tracking.
TeamViewer enables teams to remotely monitor and support picking systems, automated sorters, and infrastructure across geographically dispersed sites. Field drivers and warehouse staff can also receive immediate AR-powered support, helping reduce delays and improve turnaround times—key to managing high-volume distribution and meeting tight delivery SLAs.
Improve worker productivity with the help of immersive AR. Workers can wear smart glasses that display visual picking instructions in their line of sight, allowing hands-free operation. This helps increase speed, reduce picking errors, and enhance overall efficiency in logistics workflows. TeamViewer makes this possible with a single, easy-to-use platform.
Successful warehouse optimization enables data to flow smoothly across your business, giving you a joined-up picture of warehouse operations and your wider supply chain. TeamViewer facilitates this, without compromising on security. With remote connections secured through 256-bit AES encryption, granular access control, and two-factor authentication, your business is in safe hands.
TeamViewer makes it easy to adopt new technical infrastructure, boosting efficiency and driving down operating costs without significantly increasing the resources needed for IT support. Covering computers, scanners, control consoles, IoT devices, display units, and more, you can monitor and remotely maintain each endpoint from a single solution.
TeamViewer’s cross-platform compatibility means you can use it to remotely support all warehouse devices, connected equipment, and infrastructure, regardless of the manufacturer or operating system. TeamViewer can also integrate with your warehouse management system. This means that Frontline Pick users can receive warehouse orders from the WMS directly on their smart glasses.
Warehouse optimization is the process of reviewing and improving how your warehouse is operated and managed. It includes optimizing the use of warehouse space to maximize capacity and streamlining warehouse processes, such as picking, packing, and replenishment, to increase productivity and reduce costs.
You can optimize warehouse space by redesigning the storage layout, placing your inventory according to order frequency. This includes storing the most frequently required items in the most accessible locations, for instance, closest to the packing point, or on lower shelves. Technologies such as vertical lift modules (VLMs) also make it easier to use the full height of your warehouse, allowing you to store and access items stored safely at higher levels.
Machine learning and predictive analytics can help you generate more accurate demand forecasts. It can capture warehouse data on inventory movement, stock levels, and order processing to help you make better-informed decisions on re-ordering stock and setting workforce schedules.