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.
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:
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.
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
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:
However these areas are often simply the baseline of operational risk … Read More
Recent assessments suggest that the cost of transporting a container of goods has increased by up to 17%, and there has never been more demand for warehouse space, with the UK, Singapore and the Netherlands – key logistics hubs – reporting above 95% occupancy rates. When logistics costs are increasing, cost-optimisation can change a business’s profit ratio substantially for the better.
It’s
Any business with a reasonable amount of stock will probably end up looking for warehouse space from time to time. For smaller organisations in particular, this can be a nightmare as most warehousing seems to be geared to large businesses and to incorporate elements like logistics and automation. But there are still great choices for smaller businesses, and doing your homework can be the crucial step to finding warehouse space that meets your needs.
Of course this is the biggest consideration when renting industrial
“We are all ecommerce businesses now.” Well, maybe not all of us, but most businesses are now – to some extent – learning how to accommodate the demands of e-commerce: eBay and Amazon might have led the way but the pandemic drove every possible business in the direction of ecommerce and many are finding that they can’t, or don’t want to, reverse the process.
In a nutshell, e-commerce fulfilment is the process of receiving an order over the internet and delivering it to your customer efficiently. The various stages of this process all up to … Read More
When we talk about optimising pick and pack, we’re really looking at overcoming challenges to efficient pick and pack processes. Those challenges are:
These are two slightly different problems. Inaccurate inventory leads to confusion about what is available, whilst inadequate inventory is a failure to manage stocks into the warehouse space to allow for order fulfilment. The first is usually a problem of data entry, where stock records haven’t been updated or entered correctly, the second is a management failure which can be the result of poor data but can also be part of … Read More
Picking and pack is one of the simplest warehousing processes to understand – it’s the action of taking a customer’s orders from storage and placing them into a shipping box. The shipping box has obviated the need to pick orders and then process them in a variety of ways (box, envelope, pallet etc). Instead, many smaller businesses simply pick and pack in a single process, padding out larger shipping boxes with dunnage to ensure the goods won’t rattle around. Larger businesses may have a dedicated area of their warehouse space that they use to do ‘specialist pack’ which is where … Read More
What are the biggest challenges to successful e-commerce fulfilment? Well, there are many and we can’t do justice to them in a single article so we’ve picked out three that are going to be presenting real issues to the e-commerce sector through the rest of this year and well into 2023. First on our list, the perennial challenge of finding the right location.
Simply put, the nearer your fulfilment centres are to the customers, the shorter the distance purchases have to travel, the cheaper and quicker your logistics and the happier your customers … Read More
What makes a warehouse operation better? Efficiency.
It sounds so simple, but before we can even begin to improve efficiency, we need to establish what that means for each organisation and then work out how to measure it.
To begin, you need to undertake some kind of audit. Hopefully your warehouse space has already been audited, but if not, here are some things to consider. It’s important to measure inventory and safety as well as efficiency.
When exploring efficiency make sure you look at: