📈 #15 Warehouses -Part I-: the strategic cornerstone of modern logistics

From warehouse strategy to daily excellence in operational planning

Warehouses play a crucial role in modern logistics.

They stand as critical hubs, orchestrating the movement of goods from suppliers to customers.

These vast spaces, often buzzing with activity, are not mere storage facilities; they are strategic lynchpins that play a pivotal role in supply chain efficiency, customer satisfaction, and overall business success.

Problems that arise at an operational level -the day-to-day of a warehouse- are researched more and more over the years.

So all of this have to be managed as best as possible.

Today in Feasible we are going to see:

1. The increasingly importance of warehouses in supply chain

2. The problems that arise at the three levels of management of a warehouse

3. The essential area to obtain an operational excellence in warehouses

Let’s go for it!

📦 The increasing importance of warehouses in supply chain

Traditionally viewed as passive storage centers, warehouses have evolved into dynamic, strategic assets in the modern supply chain. This transformation is driven by several factors, including:

• Evolving customer expectations: consumers demand faster delivery times, wider product assortments, and customized options, putting immense pressure on supply chains to adapt.

• Globalized supply chains: complex global supply chains, spanning continents and time zones, require warehouses to act as distribution hubs, ensuring seamless product flows across borders.

• Technological advancements: the rise of automation, robotics, and data analytics has opened up new possibilities for optimizing warehouse operations, enhancing efficiency, and reducing costs.

Warehouses now play a strategic role in various aspects of supply chain management, including:

• Demand planning and inventory management: warehouses serve as buffers between supply and demand, ensuring that the right products are available in the right quantities at the right time.

• Order fulfillment: warehouses orchestrate the picking, packing, and shipping of orders, ensuring timely and accurate deliveries to customers.

• Network optimization: warehouses are strategically located within supply chains to minimize transportation costs, reduce lead times, and improve responsiveness to customer demands.

And this is not happening only in real life operations of a warehouse, they are even more interesting from the research point of view.

As we can see in Order batching problems: Taxonomy and literature review by Eduardo G. Pardo et al., there is an increasing demand for optimizing in-warehouse operations for the last 20 years: