May 3rd, 2023

Top 5 Ways to Reduce Damage and Spillage Within the Warehouse

Regardless of whichever industry you’re in, one thing remains apparent: freight damage within the warehouse is inevitable. And while the degree of damage may vary, everyone suffers in the long run, from businesses to shipping companies, freight forwarders, and customers.

Crushed, defective, bent, or broken inventory could have you incurring hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of losses year after year. Moreover, damaged products also bring about other logistical setbacks and ruin your company’s reputation.

Unfortunately, averting all stock damage is impossible. But there are steps that you could take to prevent unnecessary product damage and spillage while encouraging efficiency in your warehouse.

With a little organization and time, you can develop a practical strategy to help curb damage and spillage within your warehouse.

 

The Ripple Effect of Product Damage and Spillage

Inventory damage imposes precise costs for inventory replacement. Receivers may refuse to accept a pallet of unsellable products. And by digging a bit deeper, you may find it to have more intricate effects on a company.

Inventory shrinkage is one of the long-term challenges. Shrink levels are the discrepancy between recorded and actual inventory. Often, companies view shrinkage as a controlled expense, so anything that may have a negative impact on it can be scrutinized in the future.

Damaged inventory disrupts service across the supply chain as the damaged stock demands replacement, which in turn requires interrupting production routines. If not adequately controlled, it may impact other customers to boot.

Finally, product damage can harm a company’s client connections and reputation and client connections. Customer unhappiness can be challenging to resolve, as a single negative experience might significantly impair client loyalty. This results in lost sales and the possibility of dissatisfied customers talking negatively about your company to other prospective customers.

 

Ways to Reduce Inventory Damage and Spillage

The best approach to address product damage costs is to avoid the damage in the first place. The proven practices below allow you to preserve your inventory and minimize damaged goods, resulting in happier carriers and clients.

• Secure Your Products Properly

Losing some products while moving them around the warehouse, maybe from them falling off the pile, is the last thing you need. To curb this, you may consider using plastic to stabilize your pallets.

While most people tend to be complacent about plastic wrapping, it might just be the difference between your stock safely reaching its destination intact or damaged. Additionally, apply effective wrapping techniques to ensure your products don’t move around during transit.

A quick rule of thumb? Stack the heavier pallets on the bottom and the lighter ones on top to reduce the risk of damage and accidents.

 

• Maintain Your Pallets in Good Condition

Ensuring your pallets are in good shape is another way to reduce stock damage. Set up regular pallet inspections to look for loose hardware or material and stress fractures. Minor concerns may develop into major ones if your pallet deteriorates after prolonged use.

Moreover, check to ensure that your pallets are not carrying excessive weight. Every pallet type has a limited load capacity, and exceeding it could result in damaged goods.

If a pallet is holding too much weight, consider using a new, stronger pallet, preferably one featuring more robust material. Or you can split the load across multiple pallets. 

Regarding materials, ensure that you pick the appropriate pallet material for the task. Although Woo Whiled has long been the standard material, wire mesh, metal, and plastic pallets are now available. Depending on what you’re carrying, these various materials may better fit your merchandise.

 

• Conduct Regular Training Sessions

Safety training is necessary for all your employees. Every quarter, refresh your employees’ knowledge on safe loading, stacking, and securing to keep safety practices at their minds.

In these training sessions, you can take your employees through the different product handling, moving, wrapping, and storage procedures. Moreover, you may even take it a bit further by printing informative freebies for staff to keep and displaying them in shared spaces for future reference.

 

• Reorganize Your Warehouse for Optimal Productivity

Perhaps you find your warehouse’s layout impressive, or you’re averse to change. However, if you’re still getting a lot of damaged merchandise, it’s probably time you consider restructuring.

Organize your inventory by weight and shape, keeping heavier stock on lower shelves near the warehouse’s front. As such, they won’t require much handling and moving around like lighter items, which you can keep on higher shelves in the back of the warehouse. Examine your merchandise and determine the options best suited for you.

Bonus tip: Remember to maintain a clutter-free, tidy, and clean warehouse to prevent accidents and stock damage. Wood chips from pallets, tape, boxes, and plastic wraps can be hazardous if carelessly left around the premises.

Encourage your staff to pick up such materials as they work and ensure convenient accessibility of large bins around the warehouse for disposal.

 

• Proper Labeling

Proper palletizing and warehousing are only achievable with good product labelling. Labels guide your employees in handling stock so it’s not damaged or mishandled.

A label should display the weight, delivery address, and reference numbers for both the sender and the recipient. These enable the recipient to identify and categorize products conveniently.

Labels are essential for warehousing and shipping since they relay information on the merchandise’s unique needs. In the case of fragile or hazardous stock such as chemicals, they guarantee proper handling to avoid damage or spillage, which could result in dire human, environmental, and even structural effects.

 

Safe Warehouse, Less Stock Damage

Implementing the above changes and having a few measures in place can prove helpful in curbing the various causes of goods damage and spillage in your warehouse. Doing so will help you create a safer workplace for your employees and save your business tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars.

At RollCage.ie, we can help you minimize breakage within the warehouse. As a manufacturer and supplier of logistics and storage handling equipment, we boast top-quality pallets and roll cages, from collapsible cages to pallet retention units, 4-sided roll cages, and high-quality stillages, name it.

So, contact us today and let us help you avoid improper manual handling of inventory in your warehouse.