Keeping your fulfillment warehouse safe and secure is serious business. Your inventory may be worth hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars, so it makes sense to invest time and money into making sure it’s well protected. At Taylored Services, we are warehouse experts and wanted to offer these warehouse safety tips.
Keep Up With These Warehouse Safety Tips to Enhance Your Fulfillment Center
- Layer Your Defenses: Your warehouse should be easy to defend but hard to attack. Layering your defenses helps make this possible. Start with strong fencing and gates around the perimeter of the building. Make sure that you limit the number of entry points through the fencing and into the building itself.
- Use Bright Lighting: Of course, you want to keep the premises well-lit at all times. Darkness only invites thieves.
- Get Alarmed: Invest in a high-quality alarm system and strategically placed security cameras. Make sure the cameras are monitored at all times by security personnel who can spring into action when suspicious activity is detected.
- Control Staff Entry: Employees should only get into the building with access cards to prevent non-employees from sneaking into the building. You can take that a step further by giving employees access to only the areas related to their jobs. For example, administrative personnel shouldn’t need to enter the warehouse. Additionally, only payroll staff should be given access to the payroll department.
- Keep Trucks at Bay: You don’t want just anyone with a truck to drive onto your property as they belong there. The entrance for delivery trucks should only be unlocked from within the warehouse by security personnel after they’ve verified the legitimacy of the delivery.
- Be Proactive About Fire Safety: Most of these warehouse safety tips have focused on preventing theft, but you also want to ensure you’re protected from fire. There are many options for fire prevention, including super sensitive smoke detectors, fire suppression sprinkler systems, and fireproof building materials.
- Hire right: The best thing that any business can do to improve security is hire the right people. Be sure to conduct a rigorous interview process and run thorough background checks that may uncover any issues with previous employers and past criminal activity. Ask prospective hires for references and follow up with them. It’s also a good idea to have all employees test negative for drug use as a condition of employment.
- Put Good Processes in Place: To protect inventory, good processes are essential. That starts with inventory control. When goods are received, go through everything thoroughly. Have you received the correct items in the correct quantity? That same level of scrutiny is required when the product leaves the warehouse as well. Have the right things in the right amounts been picked? Are they slated to be delivered to the correct destination? Double and triple-checking all of these details will be worth it in the long run.
- Be Vigilant Against Cybercrime: In today’s world, criminals aren’t just looking to break into your physical warehouse; they’re launching cyberattacks to get customers’ data, credit card numbers, as well as proprietary information. The answer to supply chain security can be found in the cloud. By handing cybersecurity off to a third-party cloud-based service provider, you can trust that your supply chain is being protected 24/7 by experts who have the latest anti-hacker technology and know-how to use it.
When it comes to protecting your business, products, and reputation, no measure is too small. Start putting these warehouse safety tips into practice today to prevent a disaster tomorrow.
Taylored Fulfillment Services is a fully integrated third-party logistics provider specializing in wholesale, retail, and direct-to-consumer unit fulfillment. Headquartered in Iselin, New Jersey, we operate 1.5 million square feet of warehouse and distribution space strategically located near the nation’s busiest ports, including Los Angeles, Long Beach, and New York. Since its humble beginnings in 1992, Taylored Fulfillment Services has become a national leader in distribution, fulfillment, and warehousing.
