Putaway is a crucial part of warehouse management that involves several essential steps. Think of it as unpacking and organizing your groceries after a trip to the supermarket. You need to find the right spot for each item in your pantry to keep everything organized. In this guide, we’ll understand what it is, its types, benefits and best practices.

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Article Roadmap:

• What Is Putaway?
• Goals and Objectives
• Types
• Fixed-Putaway vs. Dynamic-Putaway
• Primary Benefits
• Factors Affecting Putaway
• Best Practices
• Next Steps

A robust warehouse management software (WMS) ensures inventory accuracy, optimizes space utilization, improves productivity and enhances visibility into warehouse operations. Putaway identifies the exact storage location, transports products to the available place and records its information.

What Is Putaway?

Putaway is the process of moving goods or products from the receiving area to their designated locations within a warehouse. It’s a significant part of warehouse operations that requires careful planning and execution to store products in accessible locations.

It typically starts with warehouse receiving and ends when inventory is in place. Putaway helps keep the warehouse organized, improves efficiency and enables quick product access.

Goals and Objectives

The major goal of warehouse putaway is to receive and store inventory to maximize storage capacity, ensure accuracy, reduce labor costs, optimize warehouse layout and improve inventory management.

Although workers can place items from one location to another, a putaway process focuses on specific metrics like cycle time, inventory accuracy, and space utilization that support efficient warehouse operations. It creates an efficient, organized and retrievable storage system that promotes smooth warehouse functioning.

Types

Different warehouse putaway types depend on space availability, item quantity, number of warehouses and their size, item weight, storage conditions and more. Keeping these features in mind, let’s define the different types of putaway processes.

Directed

Directed putaway stores goods in warehouses using predefined rules like demand patterns and layout. It reduces the time and effort required to locate and store goods. This process includes the following steps:

1. Receipt of Goods: This step involves a packing slip or delivery note that contains item information such as SKUs (stock keeping units), quantity and storage requirements.
2. Storage Location Identification: Identify the storage location using criteria like checking warehouse space availability or goods restriction requirements.
3. Storage Location Assignment: Once you identify a suitable storage location, the system assigns it to the incoming goods.
4. Goods Movement: Move goods to the assigned storage location using forklifts, conveyors or other material handling equipment.
5. Storage Verification: The system conducts a verification process using barcode scanners or RFID tags and compares them to the assigned location.

Dynamic

The dynamic putaway process involves storing goods according to current demand patterns without a fixed location or predefined rules. The WMS uses real-time data and algorithms to determine the optimal storage location for each incoming item based on item velocity, order frequency and product dimensions.

1. Real-Time Data Collection: Gather real-time data about incoming item specifications like dimensions, weight, velocity and order frequency.
2. Algorithm-Based Location Assignment: After data collection, the WMS uses algorithms to determine the best storage location for each item. These algorithms consider demand patterns, proximity to other frequently ordered items, available storage space and more.
3. Dynamic Storage Allocation: Allocate storage space for each item, allowing more efficient use of available warehouse space.
4. Putaway Execution: Use material handling equipment such as forklifts, conveyors, or automated storage and retrieval systems (AS/RS) to move items to their assigned storage location.

Fixed-Location

Fixed-location putaway is ideal for warehouses with numerous SKUs (stock-keeping units) and high inventory turnover. It ensures that received items get a designated spot when they arrive. Assigning a specific location for each item helps workers locate and retrieve items quickly, resulting in a faster order fulfillment rate.

Key factors to keep in mind when implementing fixed-location putaway are item size and weight, available warehouse space and frequency of order for each SKU. Although this process may vary depending on the inventory management system and type of warehouse, these are some common steps.

1. Receiving: Once items arrive, inspect them for damage or discrepancies. After inspection, you can tag the items with a unique identification number or barcode for tracking.
2. Location Assignment: Assign specific locations for these items using factors like size, weight and order frequency. Record the location in the inventory management system so workers can locate items as needed.
3. Putaway: Deliver the item to its designated area. This step involves physically moving the product to the correct location and scanning its barcode to record and verify that it’s in the right spot.
4. Verification: Allow workers to view and access items to ensure you store them in the correct location.
5. Replenishment: Replenish items from bulk storage locations to fixed-location storage areas.
6. Cycle Counting: Perform periodic cycle counts to investigate discrepancies while making necessary corrections.

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Fixed-Putaway vs. Dynamic-Putaway

Fixed	Dynamic
Requires laborers to move goods from one predetermined location to another.	Requires laborers just to organize and place goods in locations based on their characteristics.
The location is predetermined here and doesn’t change.	The product’s location is not fixed and can change based on factors like demand and availability.
It’s a time-consuming process.	Relatively more cost-effective and efficient.
Sometimes, it results in wasted space due to non-flexible storage.	Increases the amount of warehouse-free space and picking efficiency.

Primary Benefits

As mentioned earlier, certain key metrics ensure successful warehouse putaway. If done correctly, these metrics can simplify the storing process and reduce the risk of lost items. Let’s delve deeper into the benefits of putaway.

Improve Order Picking

Optimize product placement and reduce travel time by storing products in the right location. Minimize the time pickers spend locating and retrieving items. Sort, label and place items in proper areas to reduce errors and mispicks.

Optimize Warehouse Layout

Organize products efficiently to reduce the amount of unused space and maximize available space. It reduces the time and effort required to retrieve items while improving overall efficiency and productivity.

The available warehouse area maximizes storage and reduces the need for additional space. It uses storage equipment such as pallet racks, shelving units and bins to optimize warehouse space.

Reduce Labor and Storage Costs

Efficient systems decrease the requirement for more laborers to manage inventory and save space by efficiently storing items. It helps lower storage and labor costs and boosts overall profitability.

Boost Inventory Accuracy

Label products to ensure they’re in the right location. Track items to avoid errors, lost items and inventory discrepancies. Sort and organize items for staff to prevent mispicks.

Increase Vital Product Stock

Ensure high-value products are easy to pick and track to increase its stock. It helps maintain a continuous supply of vital items and notice if any stocks unexpectedly decrease.

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Factors Affecting Putaway

The major factors that you need to consider before selecting the most appropriate putaway for your warehouse business are:

Product Usage

Buyers prefer ordering some products together, such as tables and chairs and stoves and utensils. Your employees can streamline the putaway process if they store these products together and get real-time information on why and when they need to move them.

Product Movement

Organizing and storing products based on their movement can lower order fulfillment time significantly. Use methods like ABC analysis to determine the importance of items. You can keep fast-moving products near the staging area for quick pickup and movement while placing slow-moving products at the warehouse’s backstage.

Product Type

This vital factor affects product storage. In this method, you store items based on their types or characteristics. For instance, you can categorize them based on their numbers, weight and shipment nature to determine a suitable place.

Best Practices

It’s crucial to establish some best practices to optimize your putaway process. Below are a few pointers to keep in mind.

Gather Accurate Data

Collect and monitor data to ensure it’s accurate and up-to-date. Such data provides information about the cargo size, type, weight, height, sales volume, shipping frequency and available storage. This data can help find optimal storage locations for items.

Use Real-Time Analytics

Data is only valuable if you have advanced analytical tools to make sense of it. Real-time analytics help warehouse managers understand data to create better policies to run the business. It also offers actionable insights into gaps that require attention as quickly as possible.

Create a Timeline

Regardless of the putaway type, it’s important to prioritize speed and efficiency to complete a particular task. This function provides timely clearance of space for incoming items. Developing a timeline ensures everything stays on schedule.

Failure to prioritize specific timelines could result in delayed orders and dissatisfied customers.

Upgrade Your WMS

Update or improve the software that manages warehouse operations and putaway processes. But before doing so, analyze the current system to determine what needs fixing. Identify areas of weakness, set specific goals and start implementing new technologies.

Minimize Errors

Implement automation to avoid mistakes when reading labels and recording inventory counts. Use clear and easy-to-read labels for workers to identify items without mistakes. Conduct regular inventory audits to correct errors.

Reduce Travel Time

Use maps and signs, and organize products logically to ensure workers follow the same route. This route ensures that the products reach storage in a timely manner.

Combine Fixed and Dynamic Locations

Using a combination of fixed and dynamic locations can benefit you in keeping track of the most ordered items while streamlining the process for less popular ones. Managers also use the combination of the two to better manage fast-moving products.

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Next Steps

Warehouse putaway plays a crucial role in facilitating effective operations and inventory management. Accurate product placement reduces the risk of errors, improves inventory accuracy and increases overall efficiency.

If you need help finding the right fit for your business, check out our free comparison report. This report provides detailed features of top warehouse management products, reviews and other actionable insights to help you make an informed decision.

How has warehouse putaway made a difference for your business? Tell us with a comment.