5 Ways To Maximise Your Warehouse Space

1. Reduce your inventory

The first place to start is by reducing your inventory as much as possible. Assessing what stock you have and how well it sells will provide you with a good indication of what needs to be in your warehouse and what doesn’t. 

Regular inventory checks will allow you to streamline your warehouse and be reactive to what is popular, rather than holding onto a lot of stock that is gathering dust. This will mean you can:

• Remove dead stock from your warehouse
• Ensure duplicate stock is stored together
• Condense allocated storage space for smaller items
• Create a strategic storage plan
• Allow for new or seasonal stock as needed

2. Utilise vertical storage

Expanding your warehouse racking vertically can ensure you’re using all of the available warehouse space at your disposal. High storage racking will provide added space for inventory without you needing to expand your warehouse. 

Although vertical storage can help solve some of your space issues, you will need to consider other factors, including:

• Safety protocols
• What extra equipment is needed for pickers
• What additional training staff will require
• How your strategic storage plan will need to be altered

So long as all of these factors are planned for and you adhere to relevant legislation, increasing your vertical storage capacity could help free up space and improve the efficiency of your warehouse. However, it’s still ideal to reduce inventory where possible rather than using the additional storage to maintain dead stock. 

3. Create narrower aisles

Narrowing the aisles between racks can allow for extra storage to be added to your warehouse without negatively impacting safety or efficiency. 

Many warehouses keep aisles fairly wide to allow for forklifts to manoeuvre and to allow multiple employees to pass through. However, in many cases, the aisles can be made narrower without affecting the way your warehouse works. 

Even a small change in the size of the gap between racks can make a huge difference to your warehouse overall. While the individual changes may not seem to make much of a difference, when they are implemented across the entire warehouse, they can create a lot of extra storage capacity. 

If you opt to make aisles narrower, ensure toy consider the equipment that is in use in your warehouse first. Forklifts and other machinery will still need room to manoeuvre, so ensure this is factored in. 

4. Add a mezzanine floor

Another effective way to make use of available vertical space is to install a mezzanine floor. Mezzanines can help increase the floor space you have, providing extra room for storage or warehouse activities, such as packing. You can also use them for office space if you require additional offices but have limited room. 

Mezzanine floors can be customised for your warehouse, allowing you to utilise the space you have in the best possible way. Depending on the height of your warehouse, this can mean adding in one or two extra floors with easy access. 

They can also be installed fairly quickly, allowing you to expand your storage space within a few days and without drastically affecting your operations. 

5. Use mobile racks

If the type of stock your warehouse manages changes fairly regularly or you need to be ready to make room for seasonal stock, mobile racks could be the answer. 

Utilising permanent storage racks will mean that they are in use 100% of the time, which can mean that you struggle to find floor space for larger items. However, if you mount your rack on shelving on sliding carriages, you’ll be able to open the aisle space up as and when required. 

This ensures you have flexible storage options and increased access when needed, which can drastically increase your warehouse’s capabilities.