Optimal inventory is essential to succeed in a tough warehousing environment

Every warehouse manager knows how difficult conditions have been since the pandemic and finding solutions has been equally challenging. Warehousing space in high demand areas is at an all-time demand high and even 3PLs in those geographic areas are starting to be choosy about the clients they work with, because they are so much in demand. Warehouse rental is becoming highly profitable which makes moving or relocating more difficult, and more expensive. When you aggregate together higher costs, competition for warehousing space and demand for trained personnel, finding internal ways to build competitive advantage can be significant. In addition, if … Read More

Does your warehouse need automated decision making?

What is the role of technology in warehousing? Most of us think we already know the answer, and it has to do with robots sliding around warehouse space in the dark, picking orders and generally acting like little autonomous vehicles. However there’s another way that warehouse operators are using technology – and that’s to respond to customer demand.

 

Automated decision making has two different forms:

 

  1. software recommending to an individual that they take an action or decision
  2. software automatically taking an action or decision based on available information.

 

Let’s look at that in detail as it’s an … Read More

5 essential questions to answer when leasing warehouse space

Leasing warehouse space can be a complicated process and at whichwarehouse we’re all about helping our clients find the right warehouse in as simple a way as possible. This guide to warehousing will help you choose the best warehousing without difficulty.

 

Question One – What’s going on for me?

 

Surprisingly, this is the question that most often gets neglected by organisations. Why? Because all too often, warehouse space decisions are made in a hurry. Circumstances change, supply chains alter, products are suddenly in high demand, seasonal demand requires a change of pace and so on. As a result, many companies

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Smart storage solutions for e-commerce peak season sales

Few countries are immune from the mayhem that starts with Halloween and ends with the January sales. In between we have Black Friday, American Thanksgiving and Christmas. For companies involved in e-commerce fulfilment, this is the make or break period – the time in which they will manage their warehouses effectively, optimise their logistics and maximise profits. For others, it’s a period of madness where their ability to control their pick and pack operations begins to break down and logistics arrangements fall short, so orders go unfulfilled and customers are disappointed.

 

Surprisingly, online shopping only accounts for 27.6% of … Read More

Contract warehousing – the pros and cons

Contract warehousing is being touted as one of the potential routes to success for growing businesses.  Why? Because warehouse space – and warehouse capacity – can often be limiters to business growth and increasing profits.

Outgrowing warehouse space is an obvious problem; whether it happens because you’ve increased inventory, expanded product lines or just started to stock bigger items. Companies find different ways to address this in the short term, by changing their warehousing layout, by investing in different storage solutions like pallet storage, or by renting satellite warehousing that can easily resource the main warehouse. In the long term,

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Order Consolidation- the one thing that hurts e-commerce fulfilment

E-commerce businesses face many challenges, and order consolidation can be seen as a new problem, or a potential solution. In warehouse terms, this all depends on what you offer to your e-commerce customers and how widely distributed they are. So let’s start at the beginning.

 

What is order consolidation?

 

It’s a retail practice that is being adapted to ecommerce businesses. Essentially it means combining multiple products into one shipment, but it can also mean combining multiple orders heading to the same relatively specific destination into a single shipment. Obviously, its very nature requires e-commerce retailers to work with Read More

Overcoming the top three inventory management failures in ecommerce fulfilment

There are many things that can make or break an e-commerce business, and while inventory management is not top of the list is many people’s minds, it is both one of the easiest to fix and one of the most pervasive failures, especially in warehousing. Effective inventory management allows an ecommerce business to:

 

  • Identify which, and how much, of each inventory item to order
  • Establish the right time to place orders
  • Operate smoothly, recognising challenges in advance
  • Satisfy a customer base.

 

Given that 95% of companies recognise that they were affected by supply chain disruptions in 2021 and … Read More

The benefits of multi-user 3PL warehousing

Given the uncertainty in global supply chains, many businesses requiring warehouse space are looking at multi-user 3PL warehousing (also called multi-client warehousing or shared warehousing) as a way of reducing risk and improving efficiencies in their logistics operations.

 

Defining multi-user 3PL warehousing

 

Multi-user 3PL warehousing can be defined as outsourcing the management of warehousing operations to a company or space that contains multiple clients and also offers additional value services such as:

 

  • bulk packing (packing a container, which may also include a lorry or shipping container, with non-hazardous materials)
  • cross docking or intermediate docking (unloading a lorry
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Is Green Warehousing possible?

With Moller-Maersk announcing its first low GHG emissions warehouse in Denmark, many organisations are asking whether green warehousing is possible and/or desirable.

 

The answer to both is yes – but making the business case requires an awareness of what can be changed, and how, to make existing warehouse space greener, at the same time as recognising how new warehousing can be built to be greener and cleaner.

 

The benefits of green warehousing

 

Lower energy costs

 

Running costs are a major part of any warehouse, whether you’re using a fully automated pick and pack system or a … Read More

Have you factored warehousing into your operational risk assessment? Here’s how …

We all know the traditional areas of risk identified in warehousing: hazardous materials, lifting and movement issues, failure to manage stock control and failure to identify and pick and pack goods for onward delivery. Probably all managers also know what they should do about these risks in order of preference:

 

  • Remove hazards entirely
  • Substitute hazardous items and behaviours with something less risky
  • Establish procedures that separate the hazard from personnel
  • Reduce exposure to a risk or hazard by designing best practice warehousing operations
  • Issue personal protective equipment.

 

However these areas are often simply the baseline of operational risk … Read More

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