Putaway looks simple on the surface—move a pallet off the dock and into a slot. But one wrong placement can ripple through the whole operation, stretching pick paths, triggering reactive replenishment, hurting accuracy, and creating congestion that costs you time all week. According to warehouse managers, putaway and replenishment are among the most inefficient processes, with 45% identifying them as areas needing improvement. Other inefficient processes include inventory control (53%) and picking (47%).
If you want a warehouse process that runs faster without adding headcount, putaway is one of the best places to focus. It touches travel time, slotting, space usage, inventory accuracy, safety, and downstream throughput. This guide breaks down what an optimized warehouse putaway process looks like, why it matters, and how to improve it without turning your operation upside down.
What Putaway Means in Warehouse Operations
Putaway is the process of moving received goods from the dock (or receiving area) to a storage location and confirming that location in your system. A strong putaway process answers four questions every time:
- Where should it go? The best slot, not just the nearest open space.
- How should it be stored? The right unit and location type—pallet, case, each, bin, rack, temperature zone, or hazmat area.
- What’s the safest, most efficient way to move it? The right route, equipment, and labor plan without creating congestion.
- How will it be confirmed? Scan and validate so the system matches reality, with clear exception handling when it doesn’t.
Why Putaway is One of the Highest-Leverage Processes in your DC
Putaway is one of the few warehouse processes that directly impacts:
- Travel time (the silent killer of productivity)
- Pick speed and order cycle time
- Replenishment workload
- Space utilization
- Inventory accuracy
- Safety and product integrity
Putaway also tends to be one of the first places leaders find quick wins, because small improvements show up everywhere. When it runs well, the whole operation feels calmer—inventory moves from receiving to the right storage location quickly, safely, and with clean confirmation, so it’s easy to find and fast to pick later.
The Warehouse Putaway Process
Different warehouses handle putaway a little differently, based on product type, compliance needs, and how mature their WMS is. Still, the strongest putaway processes usually follow the same flow.
1) Pre-receiving alignment (before the truck arrives)
Putaway starts upstream. When inbound details are unclear, your team ends up guessing. Clean ASNs or appointment visibility, consistent labels, and accurate SKU data make the rest of putaway faster and more accurate.
2) Receiving and verification
Receiving is where inventory becomes real in the system. While receiving goods, teams confirm the right product and quantity, check for damage, and capture any required lot, serial, or date information before putaway begins.
3) Sort and stage (only when needed)
Staging makes sense when a team places inventory on hold, performs rework, or sets part of the inbound load aside for cross docking instead of long-term storage. If the final location is known and your team can store the product safely, direct putaway is usually the better move.
4) Location assignment (the “brain” of putaway)
This is where warehouses either win or lose efficiency. Good location decisions consider what moves fastest, what fits safely, what space is actually available, and how close the inventory should be to picking. The goal is simple: store it where it will be easiest to pick later, not just where it fits today.
5) Travel + placement
Now it’s execution. The right equipment, the right route, and correct placement matter. If pallets are stored incorrectly—wrong level, wrong position, poor stacking—it creates safety risk and slows down picking and replenishment.
6) Confirmation (scan and validation)
Putaway isn’t done until the system matches reality. Scanning the product and the location locks in inventory accuracy. The faster you handle issues in the moment, the less time your team wastes “fixing it later.”
7) Exception handling
Exceptions happen in every warehouse. What separates strong operations is how quickly they resolve them. Full locations, blocked slots, mixed pallets, receiving errors, and damaged goods need a clear process, so exceptions don’t turn into permanent clutter and lost inventory.
Best Practices to Optimize the Putaway Process
Collect the right data and use it consistently
Putaway decisions depend on item and location data. If dimensions, weights, case packs, or unit-of-measure conversions are wrong, the system will recommend locations that don’t work in real life. The most practical approach is to start with the SKUs that drive the most receipts or picks, fix what’s inaccurate, and then expand the cleanup as the process stabilizes.
Monitor storage capacity & space availability
When locations are full or not truly usable, staging becomes your fallback storage plan. Over time, staging grows into semi-permanent storage, which increases touches and creates congestion near receiving. Putaway improves when capacity rules are enforced, overflow has a defined place to go, and it is clear who owns staged freight and how quickly it must move.
Reduce traveling time
Putaway can quietly lock in labor cost through unnecessary travel. If inventory is assigned to far locations without a strategy, you pay for it now in putaway time and later in picking and replenishment time. Reducing travel usually comes from zoning discipline and smarter location assignment, not from pushing operators to move faster. When putaway work stays within defined areas and fast movers are protected from drifting into inconvenient zones, travel waste drops without sacrificing accuracy.
Travel distance in a warehouse is 60% to 70% of labor cost.
Use direct putaway when it makes operational sense
Direct putaway moves inventory from receiving straight into its final location with minimal staging. It reduces touches and clears dock pressure, but it requires reliable labeling, available locations, and quick exception handling. If the process cannot resolve “location full” or “doesn’t fit” issues immediately, direct putaway turns into bottlenecks. When your data is dependable and your exception path is fast, direct putaway becomes one of the simplest ways to improve dock-to-available time.
Use fixed and dynamic locations intentionally
Fixed locations support predictability, especially for forward pick areas and stable demand. Dynamic locations support flexibility, especially for reserve storage and variable SKU mixes. The key is choosing intentionally instead of letting the warehouse drift into a mixed approach with no rules. Dynamic putaway only works when confirmation discipline is strong, because a missed scan can create inventory uncertainty that later shows up as searches, mispicks, and correction moves.
Keep the warehouse organized so the process stays repeatable
Organization is not cosmetic. It’s operational control. When aisles are blocked, location labels are hard to scan, staging spills into traffic lanes, or overflow spreads without boundaries, putaway slows down and errors increase. Putaway becomes repeatable when locations are easy to identify, travel lanes stay open, and exceptions are handled through a defined process instead of improvised workarounds. The goal is a warehouse where the easiest way to work is also the correct way to work.
Putaway Methods and When to Use Each
Fixed-location Putaway
A SKU (or product family) always goes to the same location.
Works well when:
- You have stable demand and stable assortment
- The team needs simplicity
- You manage a forward pick area that must stay consistent
Watch-out for:
- Space gets “reserved” even when the SKU is low volume
- Seasonal spikes can overflow and create overflow chaos
Dynamic (Random) Putaway
Product goes to the best available open slot based on rules.
Works well when:
- There’s high SKU counts or fluctuating inventory
- You need better space utilization
- Your team relies on system-directed work
Watch-out for:
- Requires strong scanning discipline and system accuracy
- Poor master data creates bad slot decisions fast
Directed Putaway (System-Guided)
The system actively directs the operator to the best slot.
Works well when:
- Reducing decision-making and variability
- You’re serious about travel reduction and standard work
- Scaling is the goal, without relying on “tribal knowledge”
Direct Putaway (No Staging)
Move inbound product straight from receiving to its final location.
Works well when:
- Locations can be assigned immediately
- Product is ready to store (no QA hold, no relabel)
- You want fewer touches and faster dock-to-stock
How to Measure Putaway Performance
1) Dock-to-stock time
Dock-to-stock shows how long it takes for received inventory to become available for picking. It’s one of the clearest indicators of inbound health. When this metric rises, it usually points to staging overload, labor mismatches during peak receiving, slow exception handling, or inventory that can’t be slotted because locations aren’t truly available. Pressure across the warehouse eases when dock-to-stock improves.
2) Putaway cycle time
Putaway cycle time measures how quickly putaway tasks are completed and confirmed after receiving. It isolates putaway performance from supplier or appointment issues. Spikes often signal congestion, long travel, poor task grouping, or frequent interruptions from higher-priority work.
3) Putaway accuracy
Putaway accuracy answers a simple but costly question: does inventory end up where the system says it is? Low accuracy doesn’t just cause mispicks—it creates searching, correction moves, and distrust in inventory data. Weak scan discipline, unclear location labeling, and workaround-driven exception handling are the most common root causes.
4) Touches per pallet (or per case)
Touches expose hidden waste. Every extra move—staging, re-staging, relocating inventory because a slot didn’t work—adds labor, congestion, and risk of damage. High touches usually indicate upstream problems with data, slotting rules, or capacity planning.
5) Travel time or distance per task
Travel is one of the largest silent drains on warehouse capacity. Long cross-building moves, empty travel, and backtracking reduce throughput without showing up in basic productivity metrics. Even rough estimates by zone or task type can reveal where layout or putaway rules are forcing unnecessary miles.
6) Exception rate
Exception rate shows how often putaway fails on the first attempt due to full locations, blocked slots, fit issues, labeling problems, or rule conflicts. Exceptions are rarely random, they tend to cluster by zone, SKU, or time of day. Tracking them by reason helps fix root causes instead of repeatedly reacting to symptoms.
Technology that Improves Putaway
Technology only earns its keep when it makes standard work easier to follow. If the process is loose, tools won’t fix it—they’ll just help you move inconsistency faster. What you want is fewer decisions on the floor, clean confirmations, and visibility you can trust.
A strong WMS is usually the starting point because it gives you real-time inventory visibility and rule-based putaway. It should understand location constraints like capacity and restrictions, then guide teams to the right slot, with real-time confirmation and a structured way to manage exceptions, so problems don’t end up living inside spreadsheets.
Mobile scanning is the minimum standard that keeps the system aligned with reality. If scans don’t happen consistently, inventory drift creeps in, and supervisors spend more time searching and correcting than improving flow.
RFID can help in high-velocity environments where manual scans become friction. Used selectively, it can reduce repeated scan steps and tighten tracking without slowing the operation down.
If you want these pieces to work together instead of feeling like separate tools, a platform approach helps. Supply Chain Orchestrator brings WMS, a mobile app, and dimensioning into one connected system, so putaway decisions and confirmations stay consistent across the floor.
Conclusion
Putaway is one of the simplest ways to boost warehouse performance—because when inventory goes to the right place and gets confirmed correctly, you cut travel and extra touches, protect accuracy, and make picking and replenishment run smoother.
That said, process improvements only work when the building is organized and disciplined. If aisles are cluttered, locations aren’t clearly labeled, or teams skip confirmations, even the best putaway strategies will break down. Clean flow, clear rules, and consistent execution are what make putaway scalable.
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