Your New Year's resolution: Clean up that warehouse

How often do you venture into your stockroom or warehouse to look for specific goods, only to come out empty-handed or exhausted because it's chaotic in there? Though your room might seem like a disaster zone before Christmas, after the big Boxing Day rush, you'll have the perfect opportunity to jump in there and tidy things up.

It's time to draw up a plan of attack, hire a scissor lift or two to reach those high shelves and put in the work to make 2016 a more efficient year than last. These tips will help you.

Declutter any historic mess

In some warehouses, it seems that certain piles of clutter have been there so long they are almost as old as the building itself. Hire an industrial waste bin and get a team to go through the room section by section, throwing out rubbish and figuring out what stock is where.

A paper by Aberdeen Group stated that a way for warehouse companies both medium-sized and large to become more productive is to streamline the warehouse itself, and make it more agile. So go through your business and see if you can figure out a more sensible system of organisation now that most of the mess is gone. Can sections be consolidated? Could you justify purchasing more or higher racks? Vertical stacking is a more effective way to use less floor space, after all.

Consider using more signage

How easy to navigate is your warehouse or stockroom? In a Nielsen customer report from earlier this year, a poll found that 18 per cent of respondents put organisation at the top of their New Year's resolution list. This should be your 2016 resolution, too, and signage can help. Think about wayfinding - arrows on the floor for forklift routes, a plus symbol to mark where pallets should go, or labelling different racks with different types of stock.

Clean it up and start a roster

According to Western Australia's Department of Health (DoH), dust can be a health hazard for those with respiratory conditions such as asthma or hay fever. This isn't including the effects of black mould, which the DoH states can also cause problems.

With less stock in your warehouse prior to the new year, get in quick and get cleaning. A big effort now can make it easier to clean in smaller bursts as the year goes on. You could also consider concrete cleaning as a part of this endeavour, to ensure not just the racks are ready for 2016, but the entire space.