Every warehouse has one, the person who seems to know where everything is. Ask where a particular product is stored and they don’t need to check a system, they just know. Ask whether there is any stock left and they can probably tell you. Ask which customer needs an order urgently, which products are due in, or why a particular item has been moved to a different location, and somehow they have the answer. They are invaluable to the business, but what happens when they go on holiday?
“I’ll Just Ask Dave…”
For many small and growing businesses, a surprising amount of warehouse knowledge lives inside people’s heads. It’s not necessarily a problem when that person is there every day, everyone knows who to ask, but then they take a week’s holiday the warehouse feels very different. Someone needs to find a product but doesn’t know exactly where it is, a stock level needs checking, a customer asks when their order will be ready, a delivery arrives and nobody is quite sure where the new stock should go. The questions start piling up.
The Problem Isn’t The Employee
It’s important to say that this isn’t really a problem with the person who knows everything as their experience is incredibly valuable. The problem is that the business has become dependent on one person’s knowledge. If one employee is the only person who knows how the warehouse works, that knowledge becomes a potential point of failure. Holidays aren’t the only reason that knowledge might suddenly become unavailable; people get sick, they change roles, they leave businesses, businesses grow and new employees join. Suddenly, the informal knowledge that worked perfectly well when the company was smaller becomes much harder to manage.
What Happens When the Warehouse Grows?
This can become particularly noticeable in small businesses. When you’re holding a relatively small amount of stock, it can be perfectly possible to remember where things are but as the business grows, so does the warehouse. More products mean more locations, more orders mean more picking, more staff mean more people need access to the same information and more customers mean greater expectations around stock availability and delivery. At some point, simply knowing where everything is isn’t enough, the warehouse needs a system.
Turning Knowledge into Information
One of the biggest benefits of a Warehouse Management System is that it can take information that might previously have existed only in someone’s head and make it available to the wider team. Instead of “Ask Dave, he’ll know where it is.” you can have “Check the system.” That might sound like a small change, but it can make a significant difference. Warehouse locations can be recorded, stock levels can be visible, orders can be tracked, picking processes can be standardised, and staff don’t necessarily need years of experience to know how to find every product. Imagine employing someone new in the warehouse. Without a structured system, they may need to spend weeks learning:
- Where products are stored
- Which locations contain which stock
- How stock is moved
- Which orders take priority
- How picking works
- How replenishment is handled
- Where to find information
With a WMS supporting those processes, much of that information is available within the system. That doesn’t replace experience or good warehouse staff. Instead, it gives them the tools they need to work effectively. Good warehouse management isn’t about eliminating experience; it’s about making sure that experience is supported by reliable processes and accurate information. Your most experienced employee should be able to take a holiday without the warehouse grinding to a halt.
From “Who Knows?” to “What Does the System Say?”
For growing businesses, this can be an important step in warehouse development. Instead of relying on individual knowledge, information can be shared across the team. A WMS can provide a central source of information for stock, locations and warehouse processes, helping staff work from the same information rather than relying on memory or spreadsheets, and perhaps the biggest test of a good warehouse system is surprisingly simple:
“Could your warehouse still function if the person who knows everything went on holiday tomorrow?”
If the answer is “probably not“, it might be time to think about how much of your warehouse knowledge is stored in people’s heads and how much is stored somewhere the whole team can access. THINK WMS helps businesses take control of their warehouse processes, improve stock visibility and give teams access to the information they need to work efficiently. If your warehouse has become dependent on one or two key people, talk to THINK Inventory Solutions about how a Warehouse Management System could help.
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