Ensuring Safe and Secure Storage: Key Conditions and Strategies

Receipting and put-away errors or poor layout design create security and safety issues. 

Goods can be stolen, broken, or lost if their handling and location are not planned and performed with care and forethought. Locked cages, gated areas, CCTV-covered zones, and even the physical separation of facilities can dramatically reduce losses, whether these are accidental or due to intended damage or shrinkage. However, with every layer of physical security comes cost increases and efficiency reductions. Vehicle and driver searches, secure/sealed packaging and wrappings, locked totes, and other security measures can prevent goods being illicitly removed or tampered with, but all such measures come with considerable cost, which the consumer ultimately pays for in higher prices for goods. Where security or visibility is weak and high value, small-form factor goods are present, losses are inevitable. Packaging may need to be enlarged and special delivery and collections processes enforced. Standard Operating Procedures could be developed to help staff perform their work in a more security conscious fashion. Any measures taken to increase security will likely achieve the deliberate complication of handling, in order to make concealment, misdirection, or tampering with packaging etc. more difficult. As mentioned already however, such deliberate complexity comes at cost to efficiency.

Biometric and photo IDs in conjunction with smart labelling and RFID or other forms of telematics-capable technology can provide enhanced visibility, traceability, and thereby better security in chains that carry high value goods.

Many measures applied for security also enhance the safe handling and storage of hazardous materials. The principles are the same: restricted access, personnel identification, CCTV monitoring, locked doors, separate buildings, and the presence of specialist security staff. 

Security staff can provide a constant monitoring presence that can be used as both deterrent and early warning system. Security staff can perform checks on an ad hoc and routine basis, advise on security and safety processes, train operatives on security and safety measures, apply security and safety KPIs, provide management with KPI data, record security and safety incidents and breaches, and implement new security technologies and routines on an ongoing basis. Specialist security/safety staff can also regularly inspect the facility for actual or potential breaches, identify causes of breaches, and take corrective action. Security staff at exit and entry points can control ingress and egress, collect security intelligence, ensure staff belongings are kept secure and visible during shifts, search vehicles, monitor carpark and loading bay activity, actively prevent intrusions, and prevent/monitor illicit use of exits. This is a solution that is effective but highly expensive.