Inventory Control For Small Business: Tips For Cost Efficiency and Streamlining Your Business Inventory Needs
Shelves upon shelves of boxes and shrink-wrap fill your warehouses. Amid the sights of seemingly endless shelving, the strong scent of packaging materials and wooden pallets, and the sounds of forklift beeps and the clanging metal of trucks being unloaded, you relish your facility’s potential for profitability.
The problem is that you may be affecting your bottom line through poor small business warehouse inventory management practices. Creating a comprehensive inventory management plan can help you avoid running out of essential products while preventing your money from being tied up in overstock, striking the perfect stock balance for achieving profitable operations. Let’s explore the top tips for cost efficiency and streamlining your business inventory needs.
1. Performing ABC Analysis
A key solution for enhancing inventory control for a small business is to divide your inventory into three categories: A) essential and high-value items (e.g., personal protective equipment or PPE), B) items that are moderately used (e.g., certain packaging materials), and C) low-priced items (e.g., basic cleaning products). Performing ABC analysis can help you prioritize inventory management to ensure your most essential products are consistently available.
2. Implementing Oldest-First Principle
Another strategy for inventory control for small businesses is to apply the oldest-first principle for cleaning and food materials. To keep any food items from spoiling, make sure older stock is used before newer stock. For PPE and cleaning supplies, use older products first to prevent them from expiring.
3. Enhancing Warehouse Layout
A practical warehouse layout can help improve workflow and supply accessibility. Keeping frequently used janitorial supplies or critical ingredients at a food processing facility at hand is essential for driving efficiency. Other important best practices for small business warehouse inventory management are to keep non-food and food items in different places, group related products together, and make sure labels are correct.
Maintaining open pathways for safe movement is also a paramount part of inventory control for small businesses. Store PPE and chemicals in the right conditions to further promote safety by ensuring they are safe to utilize. Degraded PPE may pose a risk to workers due to losing its effectiveness, and degraded chemicals may also pose a health hazard to staff due to becoming more toxic.
4. Assessing Suppliers
Another critical tip for inventory control for small businesses is to evaluate your supplier’s performance consistently. Regularly assessing the dependability of suppliers of all kinds of inventory can help you determine whether to replace inefficient suppliers with more reliable vendors.
As part of this small business warehouse inventory management, pay close attention to your suppliers’ delivery schedules and quality. If you operate in the food manufacturing industry, verify that the PPE, janitorial, and cleaning materials you receive from your vendors are consistently high quality and delivered on time to keep your operations moving forward.
5. Conducting Inventory Audits
Performing frequent inventory audits is an essential part of inventory control for small businesses, as they can help you track and optimize your inventory levels. The knowledge gained through audits can help facilitate data-driven purchasing decision-making.
Examine every inventory category regularly. The counting process should include conducting both physical counts and cycle counts. Physical counting involves regularly counting cleaning materials and PPE items, while cycle counting involves frequently counting a subset of each inventory category.
An audit program like Unisan’s Vendor Managed Inventor (VMI)/ Warehouse Assist Program can help you monitor your inventory through comprehensive audits. Unisan’s team can monitor your supply usage, perform accurate inventory counts, recommend replenishment items, and restock your products for you.
6. Decreasing Excess Inventory
Cut down on extra inventory to improve inventory control for your small business. To prevent surplus stock, regularly check inventory levels across all categories and modify orders as needed. Avoiding overstocking will help you minimize waste and storage expenses. Ordering food and non-food products immediately before you need them is another crucial small business warehouse inventory management that can help you avoid overstocking and save on costs.
Partner With the Experts at Unisan Today
At Unisan, we’ve earned a reputation for effectively distributing personal protective, facilities, and sanitary equipment over the past 25 years. We also proudly offer inventory control for small businesses through our VMI/ Warehouse Assist Program, which can help facilitate cost-effectiveness in business for companies in industries ranging from food processing to medical and education.
You can trust us to provide competitive bulk prices, consistent quality, and exceptional customer service during every transaction. You can also take advantage of our robust supply chain no matter where your business operates. While based in Los Angeles, we can deliver anywhere in the United States through partners across North America. Maximize your budget by contacting us today!
