Listen instead on your Monday Morning Drive:

Which would you rather show your client: A backstage tour of your biggest show of the year, or a tour of your warehouse on a busy week?

Why not both? You should be equally proud.

Warehouse operations are a reflection of all the work you’ve done or will do for your clients. Are you over-thinkers? Do you prefer to be reactive or flexible? Is every job bespoke? Are your processes more organic? Do you make it look hard, or easy?

A quick walk through any warehouse operation will tell me a lot about your company’s relationship with process and organization.

You can’t prep a great show from a disorganized warehouse.

The Restaurant Parallel

A live event production company’s warehouse isn’t much different from a restaurant’s kitchen.

My mother taught me not to start cooking dinner until I’ve cleaned the kitchen. This had nothing to do with cleanliness and everything to do with efficiency. Dirty kitchens impede the food prep process.

I’ve seen some of your warehouses, and my God, if your mother saw them, she would straighten you out. They’re a mess!

I know people are your most important asset — I read your website. Get over that. Your most valuable asset is your warehouse.

Once you understand that, warehouse operations becomes much more manageable.

Warehouse Operations Simplified

My warehouse operations approach breaks down into four straightforward priorities:

1. Prioritize Incoming Gear

The Warehouse Operations process begins when the truck returns from an event or delivery. Getting equipment back into your inventory is your top priority. All other tasks need to stop, especially in a small warehouse.

Don’t leave gear on the truck to finish other work. That’s bad planning. You know when trucks are returning, so check in that truck’s gear immediately. Get it back into your system while simultaneously performing quality control that allows the equipment to return to the shelf.

Don’t put anything on your shelf that’s not ready to go out again. Don’t say, “We’ll count the cables later.” Open the case, verify what’s supposed to be in it, replace any missing items, close it, seal it, mark it as QC’d, and return it to the shelf.

Now, get back to whatever else you need to do.

2. Maintain Ample Spares

You need twice as many cables and accessories as you think you do.

If you don’t have spares on the shelf, you can’t re-outfit a kit without opening every case that comes off the truck to find the cables that go in that kit. That means you don’t have enough cables.

Never waste time looking for a missing cable or accessory. Just replace it with your spares. When you find the missing items, they become the spares.

3. Store Systems Together

In my operation, I store systems together. Sometimes, I store audio pieces with video packages. This is how they go out, so this is how I store them.

Where you put systems depends on your warehouse. Many people like to put the heavy stuff up near the front. It’s easy to access and makes perfect sense. But often, that heavy stuff doesn’t go out nearly as often as you think, and it hoards valuable space.

Store equipment where it belongs — either in departments or in systems — so you always know where to find each item. If you need to label the shelves, do it (with magnetic labels, so you can change layouts if needed).

4. Leave a Clean Shop Every Day

If you’ve ever worked in food service, you know the most common complaint from the morning shift is that the night shift didn’t finish cleaning.

Now, the morning shift’s first task is to finish cleaning when they should be prepping. They’ve lost valuable time, which might affect the prep, the meal, and the customer experience.

At the end of every day, all equipment should be put away, the floor space should be clear, and, if your protocol demands it, all surfaces should be swept and mopped.

Your Most Valuable Asset: Floor Space

The most important asset in your warehouse isn’t shelves; it’s floor space. You can’t run a healthy warehouse operation if you don’t have enough. I would rather you have open floor space and fewer shelves packed to the rafters.

“But our warehouse isn’t big enough!” Yes, it is. Throw away all the clutter you’re storing that you don’t need. I know your owner has the furniture from his bachelor apartment on the shelf in the back corner — get rid of that and call him out on it.

How to Calculate Your Space Needs

Take your standard truck package and unload it. Spread it into three piles so you can walk around all four sides of each pile. That’s how much space you need to load that truck.

Don’t just tape a 10-foot by 48-foot rectangle on the floor. Unload the equipment and stack it chest-high so you can move around it, just like you load it into a show. It takes up way more space than just the truck’s footprint.

Now you know the space required to prep one show of that size. But how many shows do you usually prep at a time? How many shows do you pack each day?

Maybe you need one big space plus another space the same size that could accommodate two or three smaller orders. Perhaps you want to allow one job to come in while another goes out. That’s good planning.

Ask yourself, “If I can’t finish prepping show B until show A comes back, should I even start prepping show B until show A returns?” This is where thoughtful warehouse management makes all the difference.

Fixing the Root Cause

It should not take three days to prep a standard show. It should only take a few hours. Yes, there are exceptions for huge projects and 10-truck shows, but your standard show you prep multiple times a week shouldn’t take all day.

If it does, that’s not a warehouse problem. It means your process is broken.

If your planning systems are comprehensive, your QC process is accurate, and your allocation process is solid, you don’t need all this extra time. Your goal should be to take the least amount of time possible to prep a show accurately.

The End-of-Day Choice

If it’s four o’clock and you want to go home. You can spend the rest of the day cleaning the shop, or you can start prepping the next order.

Clean the shop. It’s the highest and best use of your time. As I mentioned earlier, when you enter a clean shop the next morning, you’ll be more efficient — it doesn’t take as much time to prep an order in a clean shop.

If you need extra hands to move faster — say you’ve got a two-truck show and want to get one truck prepped and loaded to make room for the second — just plan ahead. This is your superpower, and what makes you good at it is your most valuable asset: open floor space.

The Bottom Line

If you quit overthinking and instead focus on actions that’ll allow you to work more efficiently, you’ll:

• Make fewer mistakes
• Run less overtime
• Handle inevitable surprises more easily and confidently
• Have more fun

Just plan ahead and protect your floor space. Keep it clear just in case the return truck arrives two hours early. The ability to adapt quickly while maintaining order separates great warehouse operations from merely functional ones.