An average of 20% of UK warehouse stock is unaccountable, showing that traditional storage systems are at risk from low inventory accuracies and losses.

The annual materials handling survey conducted by the storage and retrieval specialists Kardex, involves over 300 businesses in the UK and highlights key issues faced by plant and warehouse managers such as stock accuracy, retrieval speeds and security.

"With such high stock losses occurring inside the warehouse, businesses must assess the accuracy and security of their storage and retrieval systems", said Clive Williams, sales manager at Kardex UK.

"High value mission-critical components are being misplaced, lost or even stolen. UK warehouse managers must consider the implementation of solutions for improving inventory accuracy, security and user accountability to remain competitive."

The Materials Handling Survey also reveals that on average more than 6% of stock is estimated to be obsolete and a further 7% is written off due to damage, loss or theft.

One of the reasons for low inventory accuracies, obsolete, damaged and lost or stolen stock according to Williams, is the reliance on traditional solutions for storage and retrieval of components.

"Traditional solutions for component storage make accurate inventory logging difficult. Gathered data from manual logging is susceptible to human error and traditional solutions provide little or no security from theft or damage to components. Businesses today require an effective solution that overcomes these costly limitations," said Williams.

According to the storage and retrieval experts at Kardex, one solution to poor stock accuracy is the implementation of an automated storage and retrieval solution.

“Since all items are stored within the system and an access hierarchy can be set up, the risk of loss through damage or theft of components is substantially minimised,” said Kardex.

Both systems can be fully integrated with existing stock management databases through Kardex PowerPick software.