Stockroom Layout and Design

How to Organise A Storeroom

A well-organized storeroom can save time and energy when you are looking for items. Organizing the things that you put away in storage will also make your storeroom a safer place and prevent injury from falling items. How exactly you wish to categorize and organize your stock is up to you, though these basic steps are a good start.

Storeroom Design

Fulfilment/installation and assurance/faults storerooms require the same level of organisation and efficiency as any other element in a fulfilment/installation and assurance/faults process. In fact, the storeroom should be viewed as the hub of the entire fulfilment/installation and assurance/faults department and a critical step in the process. When organized with easy-to-locate materials, fulfilment/installation, and assurance/faults, departments work more efficiently and with less energy.

To help make this as efficient as possible:

• Stock the storeroom with an adequate but lean inventory of materials.
• Design these locations efficiently, so stock controllers always have easy access to the necessary materials.
• Wherever possible, sort materials. Store routinely-used tools and parts in front, well organised, and near related materials. This helps stock controllers find the materials they need more quickly and complete routine duties with less effort.
• Provide storage space for larger items in dedicated floor spaces marked to show boundaries, known as Kanban queues. These marked spaces should be outlined with colour-coded floor-marking tape to help distinguish between walking spaces and storage spaces.
• When sorting, take time to determine the value of the materials being stored. A simple rating system can establish the value of each tool and part. Dispose of, sell, or store any obsolete tools, parts, or other not-required materials off-site.
• The clutter of obsolete materials impedes stock controllers from accessing the tools and parts they need. It also takes up valuable storage space.
• Schedule periodic sorting, to keep your storeroom lean and efficient.
• Storage containers (bins, closets, shelves, drawers, queues and the like) should, from a distance, visually communicate the materials they hold and any other information. Use printed industrial-grade labels to identify storage locations. These labels provide a sturdy canvas that clearly displays information about stored items, so people can work more efficiently.
• The use of colour-coded labels in your storeroom maximizes label recognition rates. Storage locations will not only be clearly labelled by name and specification, they will also be grouped by a colour-coded category. As an example, a 3/8-16 x 6-inch bolt is going to be much easier to find when storage bins for bolts are labelled with the same colour. Stock controllers can narrow searches by colour first and then by specific materials they seek.
• Provide more information on labels than merely part name, specification and category. Include everything from re-order points to maximum storage quantities on every label. This way, anyone in the fulfilment/installation and assurance/faults department can easily re-order materials as soon as they run low.

Fulfilment/installation and assurance/faults storerooms can be a physical hazard. This means a storeroom’s overall design, and not just how materials are stored affects efficiency. Storerooms need to be large enough to provide space for stock controllers to retrieve what they need immediately. Everything from additional lighting to reconfiguration might be required to better serve the department.