Get More Out of Your Warehouse With Vendor Managed Inventory
Managing your packaging inventory is crucial to ensuring you’re able to process orders in a timely manner. Poor management can lead to outages, incorrect orders, or last-minute calls to your vendor hoping they’ll be able to get boxes to you in time. It can be a stressful process, and on top of that, your supplies take up space in your warehouse that could be used for other things.
You’re also likely spending more money than you need to. For most businesses, the warehouse is usually overstocked in an effort to avoid running out of material, but ordering too much is only costing more and sometimes using up more space than you have to give.
It can be a tricky process to navigate. How do you make sure that you have the packaging supplies you need, while also using your warehouse space efficiently? At some point, you might run out of space and inadvertently stall company growth by not having enough room to store more products. It’s a common problem. Inventory often accounts for up to 30 percent of warehouse storage for manufacturing companies, and the majority of that 30 percent is packaging supplies.
Better packaging inventory management is attainable. With a vendor managed inventory (VMI) system, you can eliminate unneeded costs, wasted space, and lost time simply by letting your packaging vendor keep track of the packaging inventory for you.
6 Benefits of Outsourcing Packaging Inventory Management
Think about it — who knows your packaging better than the people who craft it for you? VMI makes it simple to always have the right packaging supplies when you need them by handing off work to someone whose entire job is based on packaging solutions.
How does a VMI system work? Usually in one of two ways. Either you’ll be able to use a modern VMI system, that works electronically, like our eVMI service, or a manual VMI program. With a more modern solution, you’ll have a system that allows you to update your stock levels electronically using a barcode scanner and a web-based program. Your vendor handles it from there.
With a manual program, your vendor will typically send someone from their organization to keep track of packaging levels by hand and update their information each time they visit. They will then recommend placing an order for packaging materials based off of your current inventory levels.
For the majority of businesses, maintaining packaging inventory with VMI erases pain points and opens up your warehouse for more efficient use. Let’s take a deeper look at some of the benefits.
1. Less Information to Manage
By handing off your inventory management for packaging materials, your team won’t have to worry about keeping track of stock levels or figure out what to order. Modern VMI systems update automatically, and your vendor will use the information they receive to send out orders, so you never fall below a certain count.
2. Only Pay for What You Need
Damaged, incorrect, or high volume orders of packaging supplies are all-too-real nightmares that can hurt your bottom line. Outsourcing your packaging inventory ensures that you’ll only be paying for the supplies that you actually need, and you won’t have to worry about paying for safely storing overstock or covering stopped production lines.
3. 24/7 Stock Level Updates
Since all you have to do is scan the loadtag when the skid is pulled for use, it’s immensely easier to keep information in order. With our eVMI service, you can forget about counting and updating the numbers later when you have time, one scan pushes the new stock levels into the system in real-time allowing your packaging vendor to release your orders as needed.
4. More Timely Deliveries
Make the panic call to your sales rep a thing of the past. With your vendor keeping track of where your stock levels stand, they’ll be able to schedule deliveries, so you always have what you need, when you need it.
5. Better Account Data in One Place
Along with knowing what you need, your vendor will be able to see how you’re using your current stock and plan ahead to order more if you need it, so you don’t run out, or less so you don’t have too much. Within the system, they’ll also have all the information about what type of packaging you order, so you’ll always receive the right order for the right product.
6. It’s a Complimentary Service
For something that can save you time and money, it almost feels too good to be true. At Jamestown Container Companies, we offer our customers complimentary eVMI or VMI service with their orders to help provide better packaging solutions to everyone we serve. Your business deserves to have strong packaging you can rely on. We’ll not only help you create it, but we’ll make sure you always have the right amount of supplies on hand for free. Get to know our services better by reaching out to us today.
