How Warehouse Barcode Scanners Can Help You Overcome 3 Major Receiving Challenges
Receiving inventory at a warehouse impacts other areas of business operations, including inventory management, picking, packing, and shipping. As your business grows and orders increase, the warehouse receiving process can easily get messy. Warehousing management and operations cost companies across the globe about $300 billion every year, and that amount has been growing astronomically. Since the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, the global supply chain demands have been increasing as the economy reopens and ecommerce operations expand.
Poor warehouse receiving processes can lead to stock control issues and higher operational costs. By adding mobility to the receiving process via warehouse barcode scanning devices, your e-commerce business can experience:
- Increased accuracy when receiving new inventory
- Lower operational costs and improved efficiency
- Reduction in employee errors when using mobility at the point of tasks such as mislabeling products, bad data entry or miscounts, misplaced products during putaway
- Increased productivity of your workers by eliminating wasted movement and unnecessary processes or touchpoints
- Elimination of paperwork and manual processes
Here are three reasons your warehouse receiving operations decision-makers may want to consider mobile solutions, including mobile handheld devices and warehouse barcode scanners for your business operations:
Reduce Time-Consuming Processes
Wasted footsteps in warehouse receiving and other operations equate losing precious time and increasing the demand for labor. Not only does it cost money, but it also reduces productivity. As the typical warehouse’s largest operating expense, labor costs consume anywhere from 50 to 70 percent of the average company’s warehousing budget.
You can reduce cumulative hours spent walking back and forth between the receiving and storage areas to input data and print labels. Workers can stay connected to enterprise software like their warehouse management system (WMS), inventory, or enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, no matter where they are placed within the facility, with the aid of rugged warehouse mobile handheld devices.
Mobile computers such as handheld or wearable devices can boost dock to stock cycle time and eliminate bottlenecks in the inventory process. When you eliminate stationary workstations, you’ll help employees streamline the workflow and open up more space in the warehouse. This way, you can identify and reduce operational waste and redundancy, bolster productivity, improve quality, and ultimately increase profits.
Eliminate Inaccurate Inventory Data
Another major warehouse receiving challenge is inaccurate inventory data, leading to inventory shortages, unfulfilled or delayed orders, and unhappy customers. It can also result in:
- Lack of full visibility into inventory.
- Going out of stock at the wrong time.
- Increase in inventory carrying costs.
- Carrying more inventory or the wrong inventory that reduces profitability.
Studies show 34% of businesses ship out orders late because products are sold which are not actually in stock. Human error is the top challenge in 46% of warehouses when it comes to receiving. With mobile handheld computers and warehouse barcode scanners, you can conduct real-time inventory management and label printing. With pertinent data immediately available, workers are less likely to overlook, forget, or misinterpret information. Convenient access allows facilities to drastically decrease error rates, resulting in cost savings as lost time incidents decrease.
Scrap Inefficient Facility Layout
Poor use of warehouse space is detrimental to productivity. It’s not always about the amount of space you have; it’s about maximizing the available space to avoid unnecessary labor. It is crucial to have a good putaway strategy so that the most popularly picked products or raw materials are easily accessible to warehouse workers.
Optimize inventory accessibility so that your warehouse and workforce can quickly receive, put away and pick items at optimal efficiency. Mobile handheld devices from industry leader, Honeywell, can help overcome these warehouse receiving challenges by empowering mobility at the point of task.
Since the pandemic, the logistics industry had to quickly shift to support:
- Increased customer demand
- Supply chain backlogs
- Labor shortage
Therefore, updating the warehouse receiving process and adopting warehouse barcode scanners have become necessary to eliminate warehouse receiving challenges. Warehouse automation is becoming increasingly common to capture data, disseminate information, make the best use of labor resources and save time.
It also helps alleviate the stress for your workers. Without having the right technology like warehouse automation in place, manual processes will continue to take a toll on warehouse workers and impact efficiency. With the right supporting technology, you will be able to provide the level of accuracy, efficiency, or scalability required by today’s rapidly growing customer demand.
How to Improve Warehouse Receiving Processes
While warehouse management challenges can sometimes feel overwhelming and highly taxing, it’s essential to know that viable solutions exist. Many warehouse management challenges are process issues that can be solved through automation. When you take a closer look at how your warehouse operates and incorporate mobile handheld computers, you will effectively address each of these warehouse receiving challenges. Then you can develop a new and improved warehouse process that is streamlined, efficient, and profitable. Barcode scanning software such as warehouse barcode scanners, and other inventory management automation tools, can help you resolve these and different warehouse receiving challenges and make your warehouse more productive and efficient.
DecisionPoint Systems’ solutions combine innovation and usability to meet your unique workflow and environment needs. From partnering with other industry leaders like Honeywell for their rugged, dependable mobile devices or offering support on selecting the right barcode scanning devices, DPS can assist in all areas of your business.
Contact us to learn how our mobility solutions can benefit your warehouse receiving processes.
This blog is sponsored by Honeywell. For industry-leading performance, the Honeywell productivity line of mobile computers is the smart choice. Be sure to browse their entire product selection or contact Honeywell for more information.
