Distribution Network Planning
To stay competitive in today’s tough market, the location of your warehouse is vital. To grow retail business need to offer to customers faster and affordable shipping time, which is dependent on the warehousing location as the location of the warehouse affects the transit time to ship orders to customers.
Distribution network planning determines how many warehouses or distribution centers a company requires to satisfy its customer base, as well as where those warehouses should be located.
Warehousing Location
To stay competitive in today’s tough market, the location of your warehouse is vital. To grow retail business need to offer to customers faster and affordable shipping time, which is dependent on the warehousing location as the location of the warehouse affects the transit time to ship orders to customers. Warehouse location affect the accessibility of business and its products to customers. The site and building need to meet the size, infrastructure, and capacity requirements of your retail business. When choosing your warehouse, also consider the volume of products and seasonal variations.
Some other considerations are:
- The number of products using the warehouse
- The type of demand for each product, how much it varies, average order size, and so on
- Physical features of the products, particularly size and weight
- Special storage conditions, such as climate control, packaging, and so on
- Target customer service level
- Lead times from suppliers and promised to customers
- Economies of scale
- Type of material handling equipment
- Layout of storage and related facilities.
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Miscellaneous Warehouse Processes
At the end of each inventory control, the Contractor provides the Ordering Person with an inventory report which contains a list of all stock adjustments. The Ordering Person uses the report to create, by use of his/her own means, necessary value and accounting adjustments related to the stock. Let us look at some to the mislaneous warehouse processes not covered earlier.
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After products have been received and passed a quality inspection, they need to be stored so that you can find them when you need them. This process is called putaway. The spot where you store a particular product is called a location. One section of a warehouse might have small locations for light items; another area may have large locations on the floor for heavy items.
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When a customer wants a product that has been stored in the warehouse, the same need to be picked off the shelf (or off the floor) and get it ready for shipping. Depending on how big is the warehouse, picking can take a while. (Many distribution centers cover more than 1 million square feet.). Hence, warehouse order picking methods are an important aspect within any warehouse.
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In the normal course of business, customers are likely to return orders from time to time due to various reasons and business should design processes the manage and accept such returns. A well designed returns management process can reduce costs and issues associated with returns or exchanges.
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When products arrive at a facility, there need to be a defined process to let them in. The process for accepting inventory when it arrives is called "Receiving". Any warehousing operation must be able to receive inventory or freight from trucks at loading docks and then stow them away in a storage location. Receiving often involves scheduling appointments for deliveries to occur, along with unloading the goods and performing a quality inspection.
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Before shipping, businesses need to make sure that the items will arrive in good condition. Packaging is a form of protection against environmental threats that the product will face from the time it leaves warehouse facility until the time it reached the customer. The packaging is intended to provide protection for the item as it is being handled in the warehouse or when the item is being shipped.
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Resource Planning is the process of planning for expected workload and determining the number of resources required to complete each activity in the warehouse. There are many types of warehouse positions, and they also vary by the employer, the scale of operations and location. Discussed here are generic positions applicable to warehouse management processes.
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What is a Warehouse & why companies need them?
All organizations hold stocks. In virtually every supply chain, gaps exist between when something is produced and when a customer is ready to buy or receive it. Stocks occur at any point in the supply chain where the flow of materials is interrupted. This implies that products need to be stored during this period of gap.
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Transport operations are often divided into full load and part load and due to economies of scale, the unit costs are higher for part loads. Our customer needs several part loads delivering, so it can reduce costs by consolidating these into full loads. Then it gets all the part loads delivered to a warehouse near the suppliers, consolidates them into full loads, and pays the lower costs of full-load transport to its operations.
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One of the most important decisions when running a warehouse is its layout. Warehouse layout defines the physical arrangement of storage racks, loading and unloading areas, equipment and other facility areas in the warehouse. A good layout aligned with the business needs could have a significant effect on the efficiency.
