Warehousing and warehouse management are a part of logistics management system, which is itself a component in supply chain management. A successful warehouse is a place to store finished goods, inbound functions that prepare items for storage and outbound functions that consolidate, pack and ship orders, provide important economic and service benefits to both the business and its customers.
- The reason why warehouse services are so crucial to supply chain business is because warehousing operations involve tightly linking the physical world of the distribution center with the logical world of a business application in a way that is probably unmatched in any other area of supply chain software.
- Location plays an important role – a warehouse management system provides a central location for receiving, storing and distributing products. As each inbound shipment arrives, responsibility for the goods transfers to warehouse personnel; products are identified, sorted and dispatched to their temporary storage location.
Storage is a process that includes security measures and maintaining an environment that preserves the integrity and usefulness of the items. Once it’s time to move items, each order is retrieved, grouped, packaged and checked for completeness before being dispatched to their new destination.
- Economic benefits – Warehousing and inventory management provides economies of scale through efficient operations, storage capacity and a central location. Economic benefits are realized through consolidation and accumulation operations.
Consolidation operations in warehousing services cut outbound delivery costs for both the business and its customers. Instead of shipping items individually from multiple sources, items are delivered to a central warehouse, packaged together and shipped back out as a complete order.
Accumulation operations allow a warehouse to balance supply and demand for seasonal and long-term storage. This can be vital to business profitability when demand for a product is year-round but the product may only be available at certain times of the year.
- Storage and service management – warehouses can serve as part of a contingency plan to ensure outbound orders are filled in full and on time. A practice called safety stocking allows businesses to maintain a predetermined number of inventory items at its warehouse.
On the inbound side, safety stocking means that an emergency such as a transportation delay or a shipment containing defective or damaged goods won’t delay warehousing and fulfilment services. On the outbound side, safety stocking is insurance against out-of-stock items.
Gati-KWE combines multiple logistics functions into a customized service package based on customer requirements by engaging multiple distribution & supply chain services. Gati has 3Mn+ square feet warehousing capacity with e–fulfilment centers available at various strategic locations.
