There are some situations that are beyond the control of your warehouse floor staff. A solid warehouse management system will also take into account complications in the order fulfillment process caused by items that are either out of stock, in the wrong locations, or outdated.
- Out-of-stock items: Items that are on back order from the manufacturer, causing orders to get backed up.
- Turnover: If the store is adhering to first-in, first-out policies, you need to know how long products are lingering in your store, especially if they have expiration dates.
- Missing items: Items that are showing as available in the warehouse management system but are not in their correct locations. This is another form of accuracy measurement.
- Seasonal trends: As the seasons change, customer behaviors change to match. By tracking trends according to the seasons and holidays, your business can plan to have high demand items in stock when you need them most and adjust stock accordingly year round.
Starting from the top down, these nine metrics can help you improve your warehouse efficiency. By first looking at how customers are experiencing your services, you can break down the common problems that are being reported. Further disassembling productivity and labor into accuracy and speed metrics helps identify problems during the fulfillment process. Lastly, staying mindful of actual stock errors, vendor issues, and upcoming events will help balance the struggles that pickers face when trying to fill orders.
Store productivity is a number of measurements that management will analyze to monitor the performance of their warehouse operations. The basis of many of the measures used in store productivity is based on how much it costs to perform an operation. A number of measures have been devised to help measure store productivity.
