Moving stock to a new warehouse

From the outside, changing warehouses looks like picking pallets up in one place and putting them down in another. With medicines and medical products the real work is in the records: how many units of which batch, in which status and in which condition were moved, and where they ended up. This article sets out the steps for a safe move.

Planning: date, window and communication

The first decision is the cut-over date. A window is set in which stock movements stop or slow down, and customers and suppliers are told in advance. For open orders, planned receipts and returns, who sends what to where is agreed in writing.

The new site is ready before the goods arrive

The new space is brought up to the storage conditions before any product arrives. The EU GDP guidelines ask for a temperature mapping of a storage area before it is used; we describe mapping in a separate article. Continuous monitoring and alarms should be running before the first pallet comes in.

The system has to be ready too. Product master data, storage conditions, customer details and above all the batch and expiry data are loaded into the new system and checked. A single expiry date entered wrongly can quietly break the FEFO order.

Before the move: count and reconcile

At the old site, stock is counted by batch, expiry date and status, and reconciled with the system. Status matters: saleable, quarantined and rejected stock must not mix. Whether expired or rejected goods are moved at all is the product owner’s decision.

In transit

Goods travel in their label condition and records are kept throughout; the EU GDP guidelines ask for the required conditions to be maintained during transport. Quarantined goods keep their status on the way: they are marked separately and go straight into the quarantine area at the new site.

At the new site: count, differences and release

Incoming goods are counted and reconciled against the records from the old site. Differences are investigated and recorded. Nothing is released for sale until the reconciliation is complete. For serialised medicines in Türkiye, movements are recorded in İTS as the system requires; we explain İTS in the warehouse separately.

After the move

In the first weeks, order accuracy, on-time dispatch and inventory accuracy are watched closely, because errors caused by a move usually surface in that period. Our article on warehouse KPIs gives a framework for that follow-up. The old site’s records stay accessible for as long as they must be kept.