Consistent Mapping
Whether you are going to put items away in a location or you are picking items for an order, a location scheme guarantees that you can always find the location you're looking for. Most location schemes break things down by building number, zone, floor, aisle, shelf and individual bin or space. This level of detail ensures that you always end up in the right place. Precious seconds spent searching for the correct location will be shaved off when your employees can instantly follow signs and shelf labels to their destination.
Accuracy
Location schemes also improve your warehouse efficiency through more accurate picking. Instead of storing many items in boxes by brand or shipment, you can break them up and assign them to individual locations. When it comes time to pick, your employees won't have to sift through tons of similar products to find the SKU they're after, or risk grabbing the wrong item out of a mixed box. By alternating numbers and letters in your location scheme or using dashes to separate each series of characters you can avoid confusion about locations as well. Finally, a location scheme that works hand in hand with your barcode scanners means that you can eliminate keystroke errors caused by manually entering locations into your computer system.
Flexibility
Having a consistent location scheme in place also makes it possible to adjust the size of your warehouse during peak business seasons or to make permanent expansions without confusing your team. The same number/letter scheme that you use to label all of your existing locations can be easily applied to any new locations following exactly the same pattern. This cuts down on transition and training time.
Having a proper location scheme in place simplifies all of the tasks that take place inside of your warehouse. From the moment a product arrives until it is shipped out with an order, your team will be directed to precise locations that flow in a logical order. There will be less time lost looking for products and more time spent fulfilling orders. In addition, any changes or upgrades to your warehouse can flow smoothly with your existing location scheme without missing a beat.