Your warehouse is a vital part of your company. If your warehouse is efficient, your company has a better chance of succeeding. That is why identifying and correcting common problems with warehouse efficiency is so important – you need to know what your problems are and how to fix them.

1. Poor product placement. If your best sellers are in the back of your warehouse, they are in the wrong place. The solution is to place frequently pulled items closer to the front of the warehouse and use the back corners for overstock or items that are not pulled frequently.
   
   
2. Lost or misplaced items. If a product is not where it's supposed to be on the shelf, your worker will have to spend extra time trying to find it. One solution to this problem is automating the putaway process. Before a product goes into a storage slot, the slot barcode and the product barcode must both be scanned to verify the placement is correct. Cycle counts also help find lost and misplaced items.
   
   
3. Damaged items. Damage often occurs when items are loaded into tight spaces or when items are shuffled around in the picking or putaway process. Damaged inventory affects order fulfillment and can lead to poor customer service. Changing the warehouse layout or moving that product to a bigger slot might prevent this from happening.
   
   
4. Out-of-stock inventory. Your inventory system says the product should be on the shelf, but there is none to be found. The best solution for this problem is cycle counting. Instead of doing one big physical inventory a year, an automated WMS instructs you to complete smaller counts of each product several times during the year. This will keep you on top of your inventory and let you know whether or not items need to be replenished.
   
   
5. Incomplete orders. When orders are left incomplete due to missing items, customers are left waiting to receive their shipments. Most often, items are considered "missing" when they are either lost or out of stock. In order to avoid missing items that cause incomplete orders, make sure all items are properly put away in the right locations and keep a constant lookout for items that need replenishment by utilizing cycle counting.
   
   
6. Shipping incorrect orders. It takes twice the time, effort, and cost to fix and reship an incorrect order. The causes for this sort of error can range from a lack of order checking to poorly labeled locations, bins, and items to apathetic workers. To fix it, use a WMS that forces correct putaway, correct picking, and correct packing by efficiently utilizing barcodes, scanners, and real-time validation.
   
   
7. Excessive worker errors. The actual causes for errors are likely numerous and diverse, but correcting those problems begins with identifying them. Your warehouse management system should be able to give you reports detailing your workers' stats and efficiency. If a particular individual or task shows up frequently as being a issue, you have a starting point for addressing it.

Identifying and fixing these common warehouse efficiency problems will make a vast improvement to your operation. The work involved up front will pay off in the long run with smoother and more efficient operations.