Measuring Your Warehouse Capacity
The next metric you need to determine your warehouse capacity is the cube size of your inventory. This number includes all the racking areas where inventory is stored.
- Calculate the inventory cube size by multiplying the length and width of your racks by the height of the tallest load in each area.
- Add the cubic volume for each area together in order to determine the inventory cube size.
- Next, measure the footprints of each pallet rack and calculate their total vertical storage capacity.
- Multiply the total capacity of each rack by the total number of racks in the warehouse.
This is the true size of your storage cube.
Ideal cube size use should be between 22 and 27 percent of your storage capacity. If your storage cube use is higher than 27 percent, you run the risk of high labor costs because workers have less room for tasks, such as picking and restocking.
If your storage cube use is lower than 22 percent, however, there’s a risk that your rack locations aren’t efficient, thus causing wasted space.
