Role of warehouse & its impact on Supply Chain
In the present context of global business scenario, the management is constantly on the lookout for enhancing efficiency, performance and the profitability. The manufacturing has always been closely monitored activity while the sourcing and the distribution are becoming complex and challenging. The distance between the supplier, manufacturer and the consumers is ever growing. With the increase in product range, customer base, customer demand, the performance of an organization is challenged. The one strong emerging trend is the optimization of the Supply Chain process, in which the Warehousing is becoming a differentiator for success.
The warehouse support has become an integral part of the strategic decision making process. The function of a warehouse from mere storage concept has now developed in to a multifaceted activity centre. The variety of the value added service that is being provided is enabling many organizations to optimize their resource and profits. Needless to say the demand for value addition activity is also continuously increasing for achieving the customer satisfaction. The warehouse is now looked as profit centre even by the organization managing their own warehouses.
The Supply Chain at various stages is adopting different tools and techniques to suit their functions and requirement to optimize their overall efficiency. Manufacturing adopts to Milk Run, Kan Ban, Two bin system, JIT, Postponement decisions, Lean concepts, etc. The marketing team adopts to strategies like Hub & spoke, Channel distribution, direct marketing, promotional sales, etc. The after sales aims at least down time of their product and high customer satisfaction by various SLAs and AMCs.
All the above system is now becoming more and more dependent on a good, efficient and dependable warehouse system. The warehouse is now becoming a high transaction centric, there by demanding performance, efficiency, value addition, cost saving etc.
Sectors like retail, pharma, food, electronics, FMCG, bulk commodities are now adding new dimensions to the functions of the warehouse. The present users of warehouse are from different verticals with varieties.
With gradual improvement in the logistics infrastructure like dedicated freight corridors, logistic parks, coastal shipping, the exim cargo will also witness huge activity. The GDP growth being projected at 7%, the growth of the logistic sector is expected to be in the range of 20%. With huge investment happening, buoyant manufacturing activity and mass distribution taking place, the movement of materials will be even at a higher pace. All this will lead in to the increase in the warehouse requirement with good service levels. The warehouse function is set to be an key factor in Supply Chain design.
