Raise warehouse efficiency: make walking distance and stock accuracy measurable

In a warehouse, waste is visible, and yet almost nobody counts it. The reason is that movement looks like work. Someone walking all day looks busy. The walk itself earns nothing, it is only the price you pay for something sitting in the wrong place.

The first number is the distance per picking line. You do not need a system for this, a step counter and one week will do. Divide the steps by the lines and you have a number you can work with.

An example: 600 lines a day, an average of 38 metres per line, which is 22.8 kilometres across the team. Move the 20 percent of items that account for 80 percent of the picks to eye level and close to the packing bench, and the walk drops to 24 metres per line. That is 8.4 kilometres less. Every day.

The second number is stock accuracy. The system says 50 pieces, the shelf holds 38, so 76 percent. That gap creates dead work somewhere else entirely: a reorder nobody needed, an express delivery that costs real money, a search through three aisles.

The step where it usually tears is goods receipt. The pallet is standing there, the booking happens later, and exactly in that gap the difference is born that shows up months later as an inventory discrepancy nobody can explain.

The trap: rebuilding the racking before counting. A tidy warehouse with the wrong zoning is pretty, and the walk is exactly as long as before. First count how often each item is picked, then move the shelves.

The first step costs one week: count the picks per item and bring the top twenty forward. The rest of the warehouse can stay where it is. The effect almost always sits in those twenty.