What does a warehouse layout review look at, and what actually changes?

A layout review measures how far the stock and the people travel for every order, finds where the aisles and the docks jam, and works out which of three or four changes would cut the most travel for the least disruption. Most sites do not need a new warehouse; they need the fast movers near the door, the docks running in one direction and the slotting redone against this year's orders.

Scope a layout review The ten minute health check

Or call Jayden on 0494 820 639, 7am to 5pm weekdays.

Quick answer

What does a warehouse layout review look at?

How far the stock and the people travel for every order, where the aisles and the docks jam by hour, whether the fast movers sit near the door, and whether the racking fits the stock actually held. All of it is measured from your own pick lines, receiving log and site plan. What usually changes: slotting first, one direction through the building, a pick path the list follows, replenishment slots, and racking last, so steel is not bought for the wrong layout.

The symptoms

How do I know the layout is the problem?

Five things show up before anyone says the word layout. Pickers walk the full length of the building for a two line order. Forklifts queue at one end of the dock while the other end sits empty. The fast movers are wherever there was space when they arrived, not near the door. Replenishment happens during the pick wave because there was no slot to put the pallet. And the mezzanine, the back corner or the yard holds stock nobody can find without asking. Any two of those and the site is paying for its layout every day in labour, and usually in mispicks as well.

The test that settles it is travel. Take a week of pick lines and the site plan, and measure how far a picker walks per line. On a site laid out for the orders it took five years ago, the figure is often double what the same building could do.

What we measure

What does the review measure?

Measure	How it is taken	What it tells you
Travel per pick line	A week of pick lines plotted on the site plan, in metres walked and forklift metres driven	The labour the layout is costing, and which products cause most of it
Velocity against location	Each SKU's picks per week against where it lives	How many of the top 20 per cent of movers sit in the slow zones, and which slow movers hold the best slots
Congestion	Movements per aisle per hour, by hour, from the pick data and the dock schedule	The aisle and the dock door that stop everything else, and the hour it happens
Dock flow	Inbound and outbound by hour against the doors, staging space and the forklift count	Whether receiving and dispatch are fighting for the same doors and floor
Storage fit	Pallet heights, carton sizes and stock holding against the racking and shelving on the floor	Wasted cube: tall beams holding short pallets, pallet racking holding carton picks
Pick path	The order pickers actually walk, against the order the list is printed in	Doubling back, heavy on top of fragile, and the walk back to the pack bench

Every measure is taken from your data, not an industry average: the pick lines, the receiving log and the site plan you already have. The layout and configuration service lists what to send.

What changes

What usually changes after a layout review?

Slotting. The top movers go to the golden zone near the dispatch dock at waist height, the slow movers go up and out, and the look-alikes are separated. On most sites this is the biggest cut in travel and it costs a weekend of forklift time.
One direction through the building. Receive at one end, pick and pack toward the other, dispatch from there. Where the doors do not allow it, the hours are split so inbound and outbound stop sharing the same floor at the same time.
A pick path and a list that follows it. The pick list is printed in the walking order, heavy first, fragile last, and the path never doubles back. Nothing to buy.
Replenishment slots. A pallet slot above or behind every fast carton pick, filled outside the pick wave, so pickers are never waiting on a forklift.
Storage that fits the stock. Beam heights reset to the pallet heights actually held, carton flow or shelving for the carton picks, bulk floor stack for the one or two products that deserve it. This is the only step that usually needs a supplier, and the racking and storage work is written for it.

The order matters. Slotting and the pick path are done first because they pay for the review in weeks; racking changes are done last, against the slotting, so the site is not buying steel for the wrong layout.

Doing it without a review

Can I do a layout review myself?

The first pass, yes. Export a month of pick lines by SKU and location, sort by picks, and walk the top 50 products. If half of them are more than 30 metres from the dispatch dock, the slotting is the first job and you do not need anyone to tell you. The ten minute health check scores the warehouse area against five others so the layout is weighed against the rest of the operation before money is spent on it.

What a review adds is the measurement across the whole building, the congestion by hour, the storage fit, and a layout drawn with the trade-offs in figures, so the change is made once. It is scoped as a project against the site size; the service page has the inputs and the outputs.

Start with the data

Send the site plan and a month of pick lines.

A rough plan is enough. It comes back as a scope: what the review would measure on your site, what it would likely change, and the price as work, not as a share of the saving.

Scope a layout review The ten minute health check

Questions about layout reviews

What does a warehouse layout review cost?

It is scoped as a project against the size of the site and whether the work stops at concept layouts or carries through to a supplier brief. The price is quoted as work, in writing, before anything starts.

How long does a layout review take?

Measurement needs a representative period of pick data, usually a month that already exists, and a site walk. The concept layouts and the figures follow in weeks, not months; the slotting changes can start the weekend after.

Do I have to move racking?

Usually not first. Slotting, pick path and replenishment slots are changed inside the racking that is there. Racking is moved or added only where the storage fit shows wasted cube or a pick type the racking cannot serve.

Does the review cover the yard and the docks?

Yes. Dock flow and yard movements by hour are part of the measurement, because the dock is where most congestion starts, and a layout that fixes the aisles and not the doors moves the queue rather than removing it.

What data do you need?

A current site plan, even a rough one; pick line data for a representative period; and the stock profile by velocity and by size. The receiving log and the dock schedule help with the congestion measure.

Prefer to talk? Call Jayden on 0494 820 639. The service behind this page: warehouse layout and configuration. The quickest check of whether the warehouse is the problem: the health check.

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