Reference
The dozen metrics that tell you how accurately, quickly, and cost-effectively a warehouse runs, with how to calculate each one and what good tends to look like.
Target ranges below are commonly cited industry guidance to aim for, not a proprietary study. Your right targets depend on your product, channel, and margins. Track against your own baseline over time.
How fast and how accurately stock becomes available to sell.
| KPI | What it measures | Formula | Target |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dock-to-stock time | Time from a receipt arriving to it being putaway and pickable. | avg( putaway_done − received ) | Under 24 hrs; leaders in hours |
| Receiving accuracy | Share of receipts booked in correctly (right SKU, qty, condition). | correct receipts / total × 100 | 99%+ |
Whether the system matches the shelf, and how much is quietly lost.
| KPI | What it measures | Formula | Target |
|---|---|---|---|
| Inventory accuracy | How closely recorded stock matches a physical count. | matching records / counted × 100 | 99%+; leaders 99.9% |
| Shrinkage | Inventory value lost to damage, theft, or error. | (recorded − actual) / recorded × 100 | Under 1% |
| Cycle-count coverage | How much of the catalog gets counted on a rolling basis. | SKUs counted / total in period × 100 | A-items monthly; all SKUs / quarter |
The core of the operation: getting the right order out, fast.
| KPI | What it measures | Formula | Target |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pick accuracy | Share of picks with the right item and quantity. | correct picks / total × 100 | 99.5%+; leaders 99.9% |
| Perfect order rate | Orders shipped complete, on time, undamaged, correctly documented. | perfect orders / total × 100 | 95%+; leaders 97–99% |
| Units per hour | Picking/packing throughput per labor hour. | units handled / labor hours | Varies; trend your own baseline up |
| On-time shipping | Orders shipped by the promised date/cutoff. | on-time orders / total × 100 | 98%+ |
| Order cycle time | Time from order received to shipped. | avg( shipped − order_placed ) | Same-day before cutoff (DTC) |
What fulfillment costs, and what comes back.
| KPI | What it measures | Formula | Target |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost per order | Total fulfillment cost spread across orders shipped. | total fulfillment cost / orders | Varies; trend down over time |
| Return rate | Share of shipped orders that come back. | returned orders / shipped × 100 | By channel; ecommerce often 10–20%+ |
You can't improve a KPI you can't see. Teamship turns the data it already captures into live metrics.
Every screen is reportable and dashboards build themselves, so these metrics update in real time. See reporting.
See what improving these KPIs is worth with the ROI calculator.
Book a 20-minute demo and we'll show these metrics running on your kind of operation.
Request a DemoThey fall into four groups: inbound (dock-to-stock time, receiving accuracy), inventory (inventory accuracy, shrinkage, cycle-count coverage), fulfillment (pick accuracy, perfect order rate, units per hour, on-time shipping, order cycle time), and cost/service (cost per order, return rate). Together they show how accurately, quickly, and cost-effectively the warehouse runs.
Commonly cited targets are 99%+ inventory accuracy (leaders push toward 99.9%) and 99.5%+ pick accuracy. These are general industry guidance, not a proprietary study; the right target depends on your product, channel, and margins.
Track them from the live data your WMS already captures. Teamship makes every screen reportable and builds KPI dashboards, so metrics like accuracy, throughput, and on-time shipping update automatically instead of living in month-end spreadsheets.