Moving your company to a new warehouse? First, think about what needs to work differently

Moving to a larger warehouse is often a response to company growth. As goods, orders, or staff numbers increase, the current space is no longer sufficient for operations. However, a larger hall alone will not solve how the warehouse functions. If a company adopts the same processes, it may simply move the problems that were already hindering its original operation along with its inventory.

That is why it makes sense to take a step back and look at your current warehouse before moving. Where are warehouse staff walking unnecessarily long distances? Which activities still depend on the experience of just a few people? Where do errors, waiting times, or repetitive manual tasks occur? And which of these problems are actually caused by a lack of space?

The answers will help determine what the new warehouse needs to change before the company starts planning the new layout of racks and storage zones.

Start with how the new warehouse should function

When designing a warehouse, it is easy to base it on how operations are organized today—just on a larger scale. However, for a growing company, the current way of working may not be a suitable foundation for the years to come.

Before moving, clarify the following:

• how goods should flow from receiving to shipping,
• where the longest or unnecessary movements currently occur,
• which types of goods require a different method of storage or picking,
• what volume of orders the warehouse needs to handle in two or three years,
• what the work of warehouse staff should look like and how quickly new people should be able to be trained.

It is also important to know how you will evaluate the new operation. This could include, for example, picking speed, inventory accuracy, shipping error rates, or the amount of work the team can handle without increasing headcount.

Do not automatically carry over old procedures to the new warehouse

Moving creates an opportunity to rethink procedures that gradually emerged in the old warehouse and which the company eventually began to consider a standard part of operations.

A typical example is the reliance on the knowledge of experienced warehouse staff. People know where to find specific goods, how to resolve non-standard situations, or in what order to process orders.If the warehouse is smaller and the team is stable, this approach might work. However, with an increasing number of items, orders, and employees, it becomes difficult to scale.

Similarly, it is worth reassessing the placement of fast-moving goods, the method of replenishing stock locations, or picking routes. A new hall provides more space, but if designed poorly, it can also mean longer distances and more movement than before.

Involve the warehouse management system as early as the process design stage

If a company is also considering changing its warehouse management approach while moving, it should not leave the selection of WMS until after the racks are installed and the warehouse zones are finalized.

A warehouse system influences location addressing, put-away rules, picking strategies, inventory counts, and how warehouse staff receive individual tasks. Its capabilities can therefore be integrated into the design of future operations from the very beginning.

At the same time, the company gains the opportunity to build a new warehouse based on more accurate data and clearly defined rules, rather than simply copying processes designed for a much smaller operation into the new space. Moving to a new warehouse is therefore the perfect moment to ask a simple question:

What do we actually want to keep from the original warehouse, and what should work differently in the new operation?

The sooner a company clarifies the answer, the better it can align the new space, warehouse processes, and the way they are managed.

If you want your new warehouse to be not just bigger, but also more efficient, find out how LOKiA WMS can help you manage it.