What is LIFO in a warehouse?

In a warehouse, LIFO (last in, first out) means the most recent stock is the first to leave. It is rarely a choice: it comes with racks that load and unload from the same face. In drive-in, push-back and one-sided shuttle lanes, the pallet put in last blocks the ones behind it. (The accounting method called LIFO values inventory and has nothing to do with which pallet moves.)

When it is fine. LIFO inside a lane does no harm when the lane holds one lot, so all its pallets share a date, or when the goods keep for far longer than the lane takes to empty, as frozen goods with a shelf life of a year or more usually do. When it costs. If new deliveries are pushed in front of older pallets of the same product, the old ones wait until the lane runs dry, and chilled or short-dated stock can expire behind fresh stock.

Racks that keep arrival order are covered in What is FIFO in a warehouse?, and dated goods in What is FEFO?. The cold store tool marks each rack’s order; Cold storage racking goes through them.

Sources

• Rack date order: the cold store tool, rack descriptions.