How to Develop a Strategic Warehousing Plan for Your Supply Chain?

One of the most underrated activities of a company is strategic warehousing operations. They are crucial to keep the cost under control and to deliver products on time to the end consumers. Poor warehousing management can lead to late product delivery, delayed shipping, inefficient workers, unproductive business, and loss of money in the business. So, it would be best if you had a good warehousing strategy in mind to keep proper tabs on all the warehousing activities and functions so things move smoothly. 

Warehousing operations have a critical role to play in supply chain management. A growing business needs to provide faster fulfillment to customers and this puts pressure on the supply chain process. However, a decent strategic warehousing plan can make your business and your supply chain ready to tackle all challenges along the way. 

Explain a  Strategic Warehousing

Warehousing operations are essential for any progressive business. Considering this fact, you need a foolproof warehousing strategy for efficient and timely operations leading to profits and success. A strategy may hint at making vital decisions regarding investment, operational costs, and logistics. 

Let us glance at some of the handy tips that can prove useful to enhance your warehousing strategy:

• Current Warehousing Activities: 

Your existing warehousing operations should be closely monitored and assessed. This may involve making a note of things like your warehouse floor plan and building size. All the data entered should be accurate to support your future strategy. You can even manually sketch a floor plan with engineering tools. Next, you can write down all the tools and machines in your warehouse. You can also pen down the number of workers and staff in the warehouse and mention their work and responsibilities. 

You may closely monitor the warehousing procedures and the actual work done on the floor, if there is a discrepancy between the two, then it should be corrected and mentioned as a great flaw to be rectified in your plan. You can also interview some chosen employees to get a realistic picture of the present warehousing operations. This can give you an idea about the procedures your workers are using currently in the warehouse. 

Documenting your warehousing activities, measuring the floor, and counting the equipment are all important procedures that help you find the root causes of mismanagement and gain smart solutions. You cannot form a strategic warehousing plan or change things unless you are aware of the current situation in the warehouse. 

• The Storage Space 

Warehouse documentation can help you make preparations to glance into the inventory needs and predict the stock you may require and whether the warehouse space can store all the goods adequately. You have to arrange inventory in the warehouse based on the storage space and quantity of materials. Along with the inventory needs, you must also consider the high-value goods and the seasonal goods. For this, you can refer to the old inventory report to assess the turnover data, make correct estimates, and make a powerful warehousing strategy. 

• Critical Weak Areas 

You need to know the weak areas and processes that can be improved. All the observations and notes you made previously can come in handy during your analysis of the present situation and make noticeable improvements. You may need more workers or new infrastructure to store products. You must find the missing gaps in your current warehousing facilities and make changes accordingly. 

Warehouse Automation – The Need of The Hour 

A supply chain can provide robust solutions only when you opt to automate your warehousing systems. With the aid of numerous digital technologies, robotics, AI machines, and cloud-based applications. Strategic warehousing automation operations can remove all human errors. Sundry tasks like sorting and packing can be managed effortlessly with automated systems. 

Automation can increase the processing speed for speedy order fulfillment to the customers. Slow and non-automated warehousing operations can cost in employing manual labor and handling human-based errors. You can optimize warehouse space by creating pallet organization and cutting down on the human workforce. 

Partnering With Free Trade Zones 

If you do not have your own warehouse or have an old one that is lacking in providing modern systems and inventory management tools, then it is best to partner with a leading logistics firm that can offer free trade warehousing zones. FTZ is quite popular as a power-packed warehouse management system offering optimized labor and automated warehouse operations solutions. Essentially, a free trade zone warehouse is a designated location that offers numerous advantages for domestic and international logistics, which include storage, customs duty fees, flexibility in operations, etc. Logistics service providers OSV FTWZ can be approached for low-cost and superior-quality warehousing solutions. 

A free trade warehousing zone strategy revolves around taking advantage of their beneficial qualities such as:

• Import Duties – You can defer from paying import duties for any legal goods or merchandise.
• No Entry Procedures – You need not stress about dealing with formal customs entry rules and procedures as you can bypass them. 
• No Paperwork – You just need a customs entry form when you wish to take out merchandise from a free trade zone warehouse. 
• No Bonds – You do not need to secure a bond on your goods. 
• Tariff – You can think and choose whether to get a tariff when your goods enter or leave the FTWZ
• Supply Chain – Free trade warehousing zones always provide improved supply chain operations by centralizing the system from storage options to inventory and distribution. 
• Advanced Technology – Free trade zones always use advanced technological systems and software to give automated warehousing solutions and streamline the entire logistics process. 
• Knowledge-Sharing – Free trade zones are instrumental in leading to improved collaboration and sharing of trade knowledge among businesses.
• Logistics Costs – Free trade zones and their warehousing strategies help minimize overall logistics costs.

 

Thanks to freight and logistics solution providers like OSV FTWZ, our country has achieved stable economic growth by offering a conducive platform to facilitate international trade. OSV FTWZs have emerged as a potent tool attracting global businesses and investors to the Indian shores.