The Experts Guide to Warehouse Planning & Layouts

Here are the main things you need to cover at the earliest stages of planning your warehouse layout:

Determine your inventory and storage needs:

The first step is to determine the inventory you need to store. How much inventory do you plan to keep in your warehouse? What type of products will you store? Consider their size, weight, and shape. The type, size, and amount of stock will determine the type of storage you need; whether that’s shelves, racks, or pallets. Also consider accessibility requirements and the perishability of your products; fast moving and perishable items should be easier to access.

Evaluate your space and layout available at the warehouse:

The second step in developing your warehouse plan for your layout is to evaluate your space and layout. What are the dimensions of your space? Consider height, width, and current features. Also factor in where the entrances are and how accessible they are for your operations and storage placement.

Start to plan and scope out your warehouse processes:

You’ll also need to plan out your warehouse processes such as receiving, storage, order fulfilment, and shipping processes. What will you need for each area and where should you position them to optimise your space and best support efficiency within the warehouse?

This step can help you begin to visualise how to make the best use of your space, such as how many storage pallets you can fit into your warehouse or help you figure out where the best place to set up your picking-and-packing stations will be.

Implement technology to help improve processes:

The right technology can make your warehouse processes more efficient, productive, and cost effective. Automated guided vehicles (AGVs), AI-powered picking-and-packing robots, and a warehouse management system that can provide full visibility into your inventory and automate and improve your operations are some examples of the tech that can help transform your warehouse for the better.

Before you start developing your layout design, there are several best practices you need to know about. Following the below best practices will help you support a safer and more efficient warehouse. Let’s take a look.

Map your warehouse layout & workflows

It’s necessary to create a map to make sure you account for all the essential processes and necessary areas of a warehouse. A map will help you visualise where to store your inventory, how to organise your zones and aisles, and where to set up the foundations of your essential processes such as receiving, picking and packing, and shipping.

Allocate work stations

Which work stations do you need? Goods in, relabelling, picking and packing, goods out should all be accounted for.  Also calculate how many employees you can accommodate in the space. Make sure your work stations meet health and safety standards such as making sure they do not block emergency exits and are situated near safety signage and bright lighting.

Optimise stock locations

Optimising your stock locations is key for helping everything run smoothly and safely in the warehouse. Here are the main things to consider:

1. Walking routes: it’s essential to optimise your routes with the right picking-and-packing strategies. Use your WMS to track which storage locations and picking-and-packing strategies help employees pick. For a full list of picking-and-packing strategies, take a look at this page. As a starting point, store your most-popular stock close to your picking-and-packing stations to help reduce walk times. 

2. Zones: organise your stock into different zones so your employees know exactly where to find particular inventory. Categorising stock based on physical characteristics (such as size or material) or based on demand, such as whether stock is fast or slow moving, helps employees’ organise, pick-and-pack, and ship items quickly and more efficiently. 

3. FMCG: Fast-moving consumer goods are items that are in high demand and sell for low cost. An example would be conventional snack foods. To effectively manage this kind of stock, put a FIFO (first-in, first-out) picking strategy in place by selecting the items that expire first to make sure you protect the freshness of your products.  

Implement a warehouse management software

Warehouse management software (WMS) can be a great tool for helping you to track, manage, and optimise your warehouse layout. A WMS can give you full visibility into every area of your warehouse, from storage sections to your docks and aisles, from a single dashboard.

You can use a WMS to plan the best ways to store your stock and identify the best locations for doing so. By giving you immediate insights into inventory size, weight, turnover rate, and picking frequency, you can better calculate exactly the types and volume of storage you need in your warehouse.

In addition, you can also use automated advanced location management to automatically monitor how stock moves throughout your warehouse and how you can make its journey faster and more efficient.

You can view our WMS implementation guide for more information.

Optimise & redesign if needed

You won’t know how well your current layout is working out for you until you test and measure it. Once you’ve set up your warehouse, always look for ways to continually make improvements.

The first step is to monitor KPIs such as picking speed, order lead time, inventory turnover, and daily order volume vs despatches. Tracking several KPIs can highlight the strengths and weaknesses of your current layout and highlight where there’s room for improvement.

It’s also important to collect employee feedback on your layout. Experiment with different kinds of feedback collection such as digital surveys, anonymous forms, and focus groups to see which ones facilitate the most useful kinds of feedback.

Be sure to ask questions on every process in the warehouse and cover issues such as how your layout currently supports efficiency, productivity, cleanliness, and safety. Once you’ve received suggestions, take steps to implement them and report back to your employees so that they can see their feedback is valued. This helps encourage a strong feedback culture.

The optimisation of your warehouse layout is never done. The best way to help avoid accidents and improve efficiency in the warehouse is to open up conversations with your employees and make sure you put their feedback into play. Each quarter, ask your workers where they run into issues or feel like their time is wasted and ask for their suggestions on how to improve the space.