Store/Warehouse Design - Zone, Aisle, Rack, Shelf, Position

Whether it is a medium size store, large warehouse or a personal shop, organizing and easy location identification of the product are important for all kinds of retail business. Creating a proper layout for an establishment can impact the growth of the business. Best item location numbering can increase the efficiency of the worker, beautify the shop, and grow the customer retention percent. Many of these decisions can be greatly improved by taking into account placing a corner shelf properly or putting a new good on display. Improper location layout like narrow paths, can also increase the possibility of safety hazards.

In general following concept are followed while designing the store, shop or warehouse layout –

• Zone

  This is the highest level of inventory location grouping. The generic characteristics of a ware/item are grouped and located in the same zone. Each zone should be distinctly different from other zones. The examples are the decor zones, furniture zones, etc. There should be an easy access path between zones.

• Aisle

  This is the path between the racks. Appropriate mapping of aisles can increase the capacity and efficiency of the store/warehouse. The width of the Aisles should be designed considering many criteria like machinery used, volume and weight of products, outdoor or indoor equipment, frequency of visitors to that aisles. The structure of the aisles also depends on the type of business, the outline of a grocery store aisle will be different from a furniture room. It will be difficult for large machinery or a large crowd of customers to visit narrow Aisles but unnecessary wide aisles will be a waste of space.

• Rack/Bay

  Racks are the vertical stack of shelves and the bay is the area between two frames. Shoppers should be able to access both the racks while walking through Aisles. If bays are too small, shelving may become an issue for moving fragile decor on top of other racks. Rack numbers should be in sequence or odd numbers from one side (left to right) and even numbers from other side (right to left).

• Shelf

  The shelf number is usually marked from bottom to up in ascending order. This is always advised to keep the heavier items and high-demand products to be kept at a lower shelf. The same types can be placed on a shelf but can be of different brands. There are a few major shelfs are available like corner shelf, hanging shelf, ladder shelf, Built-In shelf and other. This will greatly ease organizing shelves and improve storage.

• Position

  This defines the exact location on the shelf. The number should be sequential and usually increment from left to right when facing towards Rack.

Before consumer convenience such as free shipping or payment methods, a considerable amount of time and effort should be devoted to designing an efficient item location numbering system considering present and future growth of the business. There is continuous scope of improvement based on workers and customer’s feedback. The assignment of the number to either zone, aisles, racks, shelf or position should be consistent and easily understandable by the users. We should not ignore any aspects while organizing like:

• Identify the features of similar merchandise and based on that define zone to position.
• Width of the aisle, location of aisle, easy access between aisles.
• Efficient storage of goods for organization.
• Cold and hot aisles.
• Future growth of the business.
• Size and height of the shop.
• Entry and exit location of the shop/warehouse.
• Avoid fire hazard.

And last, products must be tracked using Inventory Management system like AlnicoSoft to save time to organize, find products’ stock in each store/warehouse. The AlnicoSoft product management module can be used to track and helping with organizing zones, aisles, racks, shelves, and position. The product stock and location can be visible from a single page.