A warehouse can look full and be half empty. The feeling that nothing else fits forms by looking at the aisles and the work areas, which is where whatever has no assigned location piles up, and not by looking at real capacity. Before deciding to add metres it is worth pulling three concrete figures, calculated from the inventory and the floor plan with no special tools. This page explains what they are, how to get them and what decision each one unlocks.
How is warehouse occupancy measured?
With three figures: position occupancy, meaning how many positions are used out of the total; volumetric occupancy, meaning how much volume the goods take out of the volume available; and the share of floor that stores versus the share that only lets you circulate. Together they say whether you lack space or lack use of it.
Figure 1: position occupancy
It is the easiest and the one almost everyone already has: occupied positions divided by total positions. It comes out of the management system, or from a count if there is no system. It is useful, but it misleads in two directions. From above, because a position holding a half-filled pallet counts the same as a full one. From below, because it says nothing about goods sitting on the floor, in aisles or in work areas waiting for a location — which is exactly what creates the sense of saturation. If this figure is high and space is still short, the problem is not positions but how they are being used.
Figure 2: volumetric occupancy
It is the one almost nobody pulls and the one that changes the conversation most. Estimate it by multiplying storage floor area by clear height to get available volume, and comparing that against the volume the stored goods actually take. In a conventional warehouse stacking two or three levels under an eight or nine metre roof, the gap between the two figures is enormous, and that gap is capacity already paid for inside the rent or the building depreciation. It is the figure that decides whether there is room to densify.
Figure 3: how much floor actually stores
From the building’s total area you have to deduct what does not store: the aisles between racks, which repeat between every pair; the cross circulation lanes; the manoeuvring area in front of the doors; the picking area; and service zones. What remains is the floor that actually holds goods. The ratio between those two figures says what percentage of what you rent or depreciate is working. If circulation takes a large share and there is unused clear height, you have two levers at once.
Apparent occupancy versus real occupancy
Apparent occupancy is what you perceive walking through the warehouse, and it is dominated by what sits at eye level: aisles with goods in them, overflowing work areas, pallets waiting to be put away. Real occupancy comes from the three figures above. When the apparent one is high and the real one is low, the diagnosis is almost always the same: non-moving stock holding good positions, locations not assigned by turnover, and no standard load unit. All three are fixed by rearranging, without buying equipment.
What decision each figure unlocks
If position occupancy is low but the warehouse feels full, the decision is about order: remove what does not move and reassign by turnover. If position occupancy is high and volumetric occupancy is low, there is unused height and the decision is to densify: the ceiling is multiplying what you store today with conventional racking by up to 3 times, and how much of that you reach is set by the survey. If both are high and the storing floor is already a large share of the building, then you genuinely lack area, and the conversation becomes renting or building.
How often to measure them again
The three figures are not a single snapshot: they work best as a series. Measured once they tell you where you stand; measured twice, with a change in between, they tell you whether the change worked. It is worth pulling them before a peak season and after, and before and after any rearrangement. A warehouse that raises volumetric occupancy without dropping service level has genuinely improved; one that raises it because non-moving stock piled up has got worse, even though the number went up. That is why the figure worth watching alongside the three is stock age: it is what separates a real improvement from accumulation dressed up as utilisation.
Three figures before any decision
All three come out of the inventory and the floor plan in an afternoon, and they change the starting point of the conversation. Without them the decision gets made on the feeling of saturation, which is real as a symptom but poor as a diagnosis: it describes the overflow, not its cause. With them you know whether the problem is order, height or floor area — three different problems with three very differently priced solutions. STOKA runs that measurement with your operation’s data at no cost.
Frequently asked questions
Apparent occupancy is what you perceive walking the warehouse, dominated by aisles with goods and overflowing work areas. Real occupancy comes from three figures: position occupancy, volumetric occupancy and the share of floor that stores. They can differ enormously.
Multiply storage floor area by clear height to get available volume, and compare against the volume the goods take. In a warehouse stacking two or three levels under an eight metre roof, the gap is usually enormous.
It means there is unused clear height. Densifying makes sense there: the ceiling is multiplying what you store today with conventional racking by up to 3 times, and the specific figure comes out of the survey, with measured clear height and your load unit.
No. Occupied positions come from a count if there is no system, and the other two figures come from the floor plan and a tape measure. A system makes it faster and lets you track it over time, but it is not a requirement for the first diagnosis.