How Optimizing Your Warehouse Space is Like Playing a Video Game

As ecommerce businesses gain more customers and add more SKUs to their inventories, the growth causes some to struggle with the physical limitations of their storage facilities. The simplest answer to this problem is to just acquire more space by opening another warehouse or distribution center. But in most cases, scouting for, purchasing, and managing the operations for an additional facility is not time or cost-effective to implement. If you need to make do with the space you have, what are your options?

When thinking about this challenge, it helps if you’ve played (or still play) the iconic puzzle video game, Tetris. For those who haven’t: the goal of the game is to pack a non-stop flow of various geometric pieces into a finite space. Packing the pieces together neatly, and efficiently filling empty spaces, grants a high score – while the opposite reduces the size of the playing field and limits the options you have for setting new pieces. As the game goes on, the pieces need to be set faster and faster. Once you run out of space, it’s game over.

Sound familiar?

In a warehouse or distribution center, a lack of space negatively impacts in the speed and efficiency of your overall operations. But unlike the playfield in Tetris, you have many more options for updating your facility’s layout to accommodate your business growth. In the infographic below, we’ll show you a few Tetris-themed tips for using your warehouse space more efficiently.