In my last visit to Ikea I saw their unique packaging in the warehouse bins and reserve racks, all Ikea furniture’s are designed in pieces for the customers to assemble, these pieces are placed into convenient and efficient flat packages for low-cost transport because they take up less room in trucks and maximizing the number of products that can be shipped. Their unique packaging takes up less space in warehouses and allowing for more room to stock additional items for order fulfillment

Using IKEA’s proprietary inventory system, logistics managers know what is sold through point-of-sale (POS) data and how much inventory comes into the store through direct shipping and from distribution centers through warehouse management system data. From these data, they can forecast sales for the next couple of days and order in the suitable number of products to meet that demand. If the sales data doesn’t match the projected number of items that should have been sold that day, the logistics manager goes directly to the pallet and bin to manually count the product stock. inventory is let down to the lower slots at night ( forklifts and pallet jacks are not used during store hours for safety reasons).

Every Ikea store has their inside warehouse for securing stock, that the customers can find their products and items. Ikea wants as much self- service as possible it works to minimize the number of items in this bulk storage area. After finish selecting all the items and write down the number of items on a small paper they can go and browse where the furniture is.  every item in the store has a unique code, from this code the customer can easily locate their products in IKEA warehouse from the floor pallet location with racking and then purchased and taken home. in addition, they put recommendations on each shelves to help their customers putting their selectin items in the cart to save more space and to carry it easily.  additional products are stored in reserve racks above these locations.

 

In Furniture manufacturing companies when someone selects a piece of furniture to buy, the items are ordered, shipped from the manufacturer, moved from the delivery truck into storage in the warehouse, moved from the warehouse to customer’s vehicle or delivered by the furniture retailer to the customers home, every time the product is shipped, moved and loaded it costs money. Ikea saves costs in their policy the fewer times someone moves or touches the item, the fewer costs are associated.

.Source: https://www.tradegecko.com/blog/ikeas-inventory-management-strategy-ikea