Number Your Bins from Bottom to Top

Another Recommendation for Warehouse Organization 

by Flowtrac

We have written about the importance of organizing your warehouse inventory bins numerically rather than alphabetically here. However, we want to share another Best Practice in organizational design.

Once you've wisely chosen to number your bins rather than letter them, the next question becomes...

From where do I start numbering? Do I start with the bins closest to the ceiling or to the floor?

Without hesitation, we can confidently recommend that you start numbering from the bottom bins and work your way up to the top.

We at Flowtrac are not the only company recommending a bottom-up numbering system for your bins. Companies such as ScanForce and SkuVault both recommend starting your number labels from the bottom bins rather than the top bins. However, some other companies out there have stated the opposite, and that's bad advice.

Here is the reason why you start numbering bins at the bottom:

Shelves at the top of your bins and bays could likely change based on the size of products that you move in and out of the bins.
Imagine, your latest pallets are carrying taller products than usual and will not fit in the bins without adjusting the beams.
Or, imagine, perhaps something changes in the operations and you need a place for items that are not on pallets. There again, you'd have to change the beams and size of the bins. When something like this happens, the bin numbers change along with it.
If this happens, you would have to relabel your system, and that could be an ongoing nightmare as the flow of products continue to require adjusting, subtracting, or adding bins.

Let's say a warehouse decides to label their bins from the top. Bin number 1 would be up high. Then, the company wanted to add another bin on top. They would no longer have number 1 at the top, nor would it be at the bottom. Rather, now bin number 1 is somewhere in the middle. This can get ugly fast! Various numbers become completely out of order, thereby defeating the purpose of numbering bins in the first place.

One the other hand, if bin number 1 was the bottom bin, it would never have to change. It would never need adjusting in that bay. Thus, the original design of your bins allows for flexibility in product size without the sacrificial cost of constant relabeling.

In short, start your numerical bin labels from the bin closest to the floor. Doing so will ensure maximum consistency, efficiency, and profitability.

If you'd like to know more, please contact us. We'd love to hear from you!