Warehouse location, explained
Every piece of gear should have one address, and every crew member should be able to read it out loud over a radio. This is the system we recommend for AV, lighting, audio and staging shops — and the one Show Recon can build for you in about thirty seconds.
Anatomy of a location code
Six segments, largest to smallest. Read left to right and you literally walk to the gear.
A-04-12-03-02-B = Zone A, Aisle 04, Bay 12, Level 03, Position 02, Bin B
Major area of the building
The corridor you walk down
The space between uprights
Shelf height from the floor
Left to right slot on the level
Box, case or pallet position
What one bay looks like
Levels stack bottom to top, positions run left to right. Heavy on the bottom, light and seldom-used up top.
Gear that never sees a shelf
Truss, road cases, cable coffins and pallets get a floor grid instead: lettered rows, numbered columns, painted on the slab. Same idea, two segments.
Name your working areas too
Half of "where is it?" is answered by a process area, not a shelf. Give each one a code so gear in motion is still trackable.
- STG · Staging / LoadingWhere a show build lands before it rolls
- WRK · Work Bench / ShopRepairs and prep bench
- QC · QA / InspectionCheck-in inspection station
- KIT · Kitting AreaCase builds and sub-assemblies
- RET · Returns AreaOff-truck gear awaiting check-in
Rules that keep it clean
Always pad numbers: 04, not 4. Codes sort correctly and scanners never guess.
Letters for zones, numbers for everything else — a crew member can read a code aloud.
Number aisles the way you walk them, and bays the way you face the rack.
Level 01 is floor level. Heavy, dense and fragile gear lives low.
Label the location, not the gear. Locations outlive the inventory sitting in them.
Don't encode the department into the code. Gear moves; the shelf doesn't.
Don't reuse a retired code for a new spot — old labels and old paperwork will haunt you.
Don't skip the bin level if more than one case shares a slot.
Show Recon builds all of this for you
Bulk location builder
Enter aisles 1–12, 4 levels, 4 positions and Show Recon generates every padded code and nests the whole tree in one pass.
Printable tags and signs
4×2 thermal bin tags with a big human-readable code plus QR, and letter-size aisle signage you can read from a forklift.
Scan to move
Scan a bin, scan a case, and the gear's address updates — every asset carries its full path from zone to bin.