Current financial crisis has caused firms to look for cost cutting measures so as to trigger demand for their products and services by lowering their prices. In Indian scenario, supply chain with its inefficiencies offer firms to do just that. While it’s a common knowledge to Organizations that cost relating to supply chain eats away a major chunk of their top line number, the time cannot be more appropriate to put things in perspective. There are a multitude of components forming a mature supply chain but warehousing is one of the essential building blocks of a supply chain.

Cost relating to warehousing and its management can be minimized right at the designing phase itself, if certain best practices are followed while conceptualizing the design of the warehouse. Design of the warehouse should take into account current as well as future needs. It should be easily adapted to new functions such as office, computer centres, or light industrial fabrication. Effective site design should accommodate need for future loading docks, truck space, car parking space and such other spaces. Inclusion of roof design goes a long way in handling addition of roof-top capacity. Receiving and sending should be best separated to avoid congestion at the loading dock areas in the building. Relating interior and exterior receiving and shipping operations to the process flow of the goods helps in streamlining of the entire design.

While we are focussing on designing the warehouse in an efficient way, an eye has to be kept on the durability part of it as well. Design of warehouses is to be based on the dead and live load requirements of the structure as it will be built. Snow, wind, and seismic loads should be considered wherever they are applicable. Wind-driven rain can easily penetrate the vast surface areas of the warehouse walls therefore, walls should permit any infiltrating water to evaporate harmlessly without collecting in the wall cavities or damaging stored product. In case of cold storages, warehouse should possess light coloured roof to reflect a large percentage of solar radiation, reducing HVAC loads, and energy consumption.

Indian’s average logistics cost across industry verticals is far greater when compared to other nations. Warehousing and its management, which forms a substantial part of the logistics cost, leave much to be desired when it comes to Indian scenario. Supply chain managers should look at bridging that gap!