•The primary purpose of a warehouse management is to control the movement and storage of materials within an operation.
•Warehousing can be viewed as a place to store inventory as well as a facility for switching the inventory.
•Warehousing is becoming significant to achieve the following objectives:
-To reduce inventory
-To reduced labour costs
-To increase storage capacity
-To increase customer service
-To increase inventory accuracy.
•Typically, the warehouses received merchandise by rail or road and the materials were moved manually to a storage area within the warehouse and piled up on the floor in stacks manually.
•Due to above, though different products were stored in the same warehouse it was difficult to identify the merchandise with respect to a particular order.
•On the receipt of the customer orders, products were handpicked and placed on the wagons and these wagons were pushed out of shipping area.
•As the labour was inexpensive, human resources were used extensively and no consideration was given to efficiency utilization, work methods, or material handling.
•Inspite of poor efficiency, warehouses continued to provide a necessary bridge between production and marketing.
•With the improved techniques of forecasting and production scheduling the need to build up inventory was considerably reduced.
•Also, delays during manufacturing process reduced as the production became more coordinated.
•Seasonal products continue to require warehousing.
•The overall need to store materials to support manufacturing has been reduced.
•In context of retailing, the department stores face the necessity of stocking an increased variety of products and are unable to order in sufficient quantities from a single supplier to enjoy the benefits of consolidated shipment.
•Direct ordering from manufacturers becomes prohibitively expensive due to high cost of transporting small shipments.
•This necessitates the need for warehousing to provide timely and economical inventory assortments.
•At wholesale level, the warehouse becomes a support unit for retailing.
•In context of manufacturing, companies producing products at multiple locations, efficient warehousing becomes a method for reducing material and parts storage and handling costs while optimizing production.
•For implementing JIT and stockless production strategies warehousing becomes an integral part of entire value chain.
•As the basic objective of JIT is to reduce work-in-process inventory, manufacturing needs to supported by highly dependable delivery.
•In a country as large as India, this is possible only by having strategically located warehouses.
•The stocks can be held at a central warehouse thereby reducing the need to maintain inventory at each assembly plant.
•Using consolidated shipments, materials are purchased and transported to the supply warehouse and then distributed to manufacturing plants as and when needed.
•A fully integrated warehouse is a vital extension of manufacturing.
•In context of outbound logistics, warehouses have made possible the direct shipment of mixed/ assorted products to the customers thereby enhancing the service capabilities.
•The direct assorted shipments have two advantages, namely,
(a)Reduced logistical cost because the full product assortment can be delivered while taking the advantage of benefits obtained through consolidated transportation.
(b)More competitive advantage for the manufacturers due to speedier shipments and mixed lots.
•Recently, warehouses have been able to increase productivity due to effective use of Information Technology.
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