4 Problems You’ll Face if You Don’t Prioritize Check-In

We all get busy and neglect the fundamentals — and we all know it’ll come back to bite us.

In scalable companies, warehouse operations don’t have the luxury of skipping steps. From an equipment management standpoint — whether you call it planning or operations — the process begins when equipment returns from a job site.

You can avoid common mistakes by checking in equipment in the right order.

The Truth About Equipment Check-in

Equipment is a practical consideration. This is painfully obvious if you don’t have a lot of space in your warehouse. Getting equipment back on the shelf gives you space to work.

Have you ever tried cooking in a dirty, unorganized kitchen? It’s a nightmare. The same goes for the warehouse.

Once you unload the equipment, scan it back into your computer system, and complete the quality control process, then you can move on and prep the next order.

Even if you’re in the middle of prepping an order, equipment check-in is a higher priority. Warehouse and production managers cringe when I say this, but if you’re in the middle of prepping an order and the truck shows up to return a show, stop what you’re doing. Make room, clear the truck, check the gear, and put it back on the shelf. You’ve just made the rest of the show prep a lot easier.

The Check-in Process

It’s a process of culling.

Every piece of equipment has a home, regardless of what department it’ll ultimately end up in. Sometimes it’s someone else’s home because the equipment is subrented. Separate that equipment and get it to a place where it can be returned.

Sometimes broken equipment comes off the truck. Cull it immediately. Reassign it to repair and get it out of the queue.

Once you’ve culled the things that aren’t yours and can focus on your own equipment, scan the items, perform the appropriate amount of quality control — some equipment needs more quality control, some less — and return it to the shelf.

Quality control is making sure all the equipment is working and all the parts, pieces, and accessories are in the case. Prepare the equipment to go back out again and then deliver it to the shelf, where it can be pulled for show prep.

Advantages of Prioritizing Check-in

Save Time

Any show site person will tell you that the fewer times you have to touch a piece of equipment, the sooner you get the job done.

If you take equipment off the truck, immediately process it, and get it where it needs to go, you save time. If you unload the entire truck, then go back and try to process it one item at a time, it takes longer.

If the truck can’t stick around as you process the equipment, unload the truck, send the truck on its way, and then begin your culling process.

Free Up Floorspace

Check-in is the fastest way to free up limited floor space. At the end of the workday, whatever floor space you have should be clear. That means you can start fresh the next day.

Prioritizing equipment check-in protects precious floor space. Even if you have a giant warehouse, you don’t want to haul equipment half a mile more than once.

Say you’re trying to prep a show and it’s eating up limited floor space. You know there’s a job coming in that needs to be checked in. That means you started prepping that show too early.

Look at your schedule ahead of time. Check in the equipment, then prep the show. This reduces prep time because all the equipment is ready and on the shelf.

You can also optimize floor space by doing show prep as late in the process as possible. That way, you don’t have shows coming in and going out at the same time.

Improve Awareness

Prioritizing check-in cuts down on surprises. It reveals missing and damaged equipment sooner, which can affect the show prep you’re getting ready to do. The sooner you know something is missing or damaged, the sooner you can do something about it.

Unplanned subrentals in your inventory management system can only tell you what you think you have. If not all your equipment is checked in, you have no way of knowing what’s missing and what’s damaged. If you want to trust your inventory management system, prioritize equipment check-in.

Increase Certainty

Once the equipment has left the show site and is on its way back, the warehouse needs to know what’s coming in to prep the next order. You can assume it’s on the truck and ready to go, but until it’s checked in and run through quality control, you can’t be certain.

Streamline Scheduling

Busy warehouses, particularly small ones, sometimes rely on technicians to help prep shows. Warehouse managers don’t like this because it muddles priorities. The technician only cares about prepping the show they’re about to do, and they don’t want to stop to unload and check in equipment.

Limiting show prep to a smaller window makes technicians redundant.

Show prep takes as long as you allow it to. If you say a show prep needs to be done in two hours and only give a two-hour window to get it done, there’s a much better chance it’ll take two hours. If you say show prep needs to be done “today,” it’ll probably take all day.

If you follow this equipment check-in process, you eventually won’t need show technicians in your warehouse doing show prep. When you prioritize check-in, your warehouse team is always available. They don’t set up and tear down shows or drive trucks.

This way, the warehouse team will learn how to prep well, and you’ll deliver a more consistent product. Getting show techs out of your warehouse is a milestone. And once you master warehouse operations — especially equipment check-in — show prep will become much simpler.