Warehouse bin locations: how to organise storage so everything can be found
“We have it somewhere” is the most expensive phrase in a warehouse. Bin-location storage gives every item an address, so anyone — not only the most experienced storekeeper — can find it, count it and ship it. This guide covers how to design an addressing scheme, which rules keep it accurate, a worked example and how OrgLines stores stock by location.
Why addresses pay off
Without addresses, stock lives in people's heads. Picking is slow, new staff need weeks to become useful, and the same product ends up in three places, so counts never match. With addresses, the system tells the picker where to go, a stocktake can be done shelf by shelf, and a missing item is noticed at its place, not at the customer.
A simple addressing scheme
Use a hierarchy that matches the building: zone → aisle → rack → shelf → bin. Keep codes short, fixed-length and printable on labels, for example A-03-07-2-B: zone A, aisle 03, rack 07, shelf 2, bin B. Number shelves from the floor up and racks in the walking direction, so the next address is always the next step. A small storeroom can skip levels — zone and shelf may be enough; what matters is that every place has one code and every code one place.
Put fast movers close to dispatch
In most warehouses a small part of the range makes up most of the picks. Once a quarter, sort items by the number of order lines, not by value. Put the top group in the zone nearest to packing, at waist height; slow movers go to the far end and to the top shelves. Heavy items belong on low shelves regardless of speed.
Worked example (illustrative numbers)
A zone with 6 aisles, 10 racks per aisle, 5 shelves per rack and 4 bins per shelf gives 6 × 10 × 5 × 4 = 1,200 addresses — enough for about 1,000 items with room to grow. Now the cost of searching: if pickers lose two minutes per order line looking for goods and the warehouse picks 150 lines a day, that is five working hours a day. Even halving the search time returns more than two hours daily. Measure your own search time for a week before you start; it makes the case for labelling.
Rules that keep it working
- Every receipt ends with “placed at location X”, never with “left by the door”.
- Moves between locations are recorded when they happen, not at the end of the day.
- Batches with different dates or prices are kept apart.
- Goods reserved for an order are marked, so they are not sold twice.
- Labels are replaced as soon as they are damaged; an unreadable address is no address.
- Part of the warehouse is recounted every week instead of one big count a year.
Rolling it out in a working warehouse
- Draw the floor plan and assign codes on paper first; walk it once with the people who pick every day.
- Create the location tree in the system and print labels for every shelf and bin.
- Start with one zone: count it, record every item at its location, then move on to the next zone.
- From the first day, new receipts are placed only at an address.
- After a month, compare search time and count accuracy with the week you measured before.
How OrgLines supports it
In OrgLines each warehouse has a tree of storage locations with any depth you need, so the scheme above maps directly onto it. Stock is kept by location, batch and even single unit with its own attributes and photos. Batches are company-wide, while quantities on hand are kept per warehouse.
- Transfers name a destination bin. Goods received without a location go to the warehouse's unbinned stock — a visible queue of items still to be put away.
- A transfer between warehouses can run in one step or in two, with the goods in transit until they are received. Serialized and unique items move in one step.
- Reservations hold goods for sales orders; a shipment is made from reserved stock, and a cancelled shipment returns the items to the order's reservation.
- A stocktake of one warehouse adjusts stock by the discrepancy found; a full stocktake sets quantities absolutely.
- The stock list suggests how much to reorder, and shipments can continue as freight orders in the logistics module.
Common mistakes
- Designing codes that are too long to read from a distance.
- Labelling racks but not the individual shelves and bins.
- Allowing “temporary” storage in aisles that becomes permanent.
- Recording moves later from memory.
- Never reviewing slotting, so fast movers end up at the far end.
Checklist
- An addressing scheme is drawn on a floor plan.
- Every place has a printed, readable label.
- Receipts are not closed without a location.
- Unplaced stock is checked daily.
- A weekly recount of part of the warehouse is scheduled.