The six processes in a warehouse and which one to improve first

The cause is almost always the same. The floor runs out before the volume does, because usable height ends where the reach of the existing forklifts ends. STOKA measures how much the building stores today against how much it could store, re-slots products by rotation, and reviews aisle width, which is paid for and stores nothing. That round alone gives locations back, with no equipment purchase.

When it runs out, the path continues upward, toward a known destination: compared with a conventional selective pallet racking system, a densified installation stores up to three times more on the same floor and frees up to 66% of the floor space in use. The cost per square meter, with its source and its country, is on the process page.

The cause is the criterion used to judge the receipt: it is measured by how fast the truck is emptied, when what governs the rest of the day is the hour that load was put away and registered. STOKA splits arrivals into time slots agreed with purchasing, gives the receiving area a physical boundary and labeled positions, writes down how much of each supplier is verified, and moves the record forward to the moment of verification.

One number can be taken today, with no system and no project: how many positions in the receiving area are still occupied when the shift ends. The supervisor counts them, on any given day.

The cause is split between two things that get corrected together. Travel, because the shift goes more into walking than into picking; and confirmation, because nobody validates the line at the moment it is taken. STOKA slots products by how many orders each one appears in, chooses the method that matches order size and repetition, and leaves the procedure written and the indicators in place.

Whether the change worked shows up in a measurement that needs no system: the gap between the fastest and the slowest picker on the same shift, building the same type of order. If that gap narrows, the method has been standardized; if it does not, the new order is being held up by one person.

And once the gap has closed, the travel path cannot be shortened any further and volume keeps growing, what is left to gain is no longer in the process: it is in the technology that brings the product and validates each line.

The cause is at the source, not in the count: the balance breaks the instant a movement happens and nobody confirms it. STOKA codes the storage locations, defines what gets recorded on every move and who records it, and only then builds cycle counting by rotation and value class. That trail is kept by a warehouse management system (WMS): the software that assigns locations and records who moved what, when, and from where.

The verifiable element here is a measurement rule: an accuracy percentage is always reported stating what was counted. The simplest base to start from is locations that matched the balance, over locations counted in the period.

The cause is that this area receives everything coming off picking without a position assigned by order or by route: nothing separates what is complete from what is not, and verification ends up being done against the clock. STOKA marks off the consolidation area, defines which orders are checked in full and which by sample according to risk, and sets the sequence in which pallets go onto the truck, in reverse of the delivery route.

What is worth measuring comes from two timestamps the operation already records: when the last line of each order reached the shipping area, and the hour the truck was committed to leave. The shipping supervisor tracks the difference.

The cause is that a returned product enters with no status and needs somebody to define it; while that decision has no owner, no deadline and no place, the pile grows and the day's operation always comes first. STOKA assigns it a zone sized on the heaviest month, writes down what evidence sets the destination of each unit —available, refurbishment, another channel, or write-off— and leaves a short closed list of reasons, with no free-text field.

The indicator that brings this under control is calculated from what is already recorded: how much of what came back during the month is still undecided at close, over the total that came in. If it does not fall, the criteria are written and not being applied.