Warehouses were once considered as an evil with four walls and a bunch of racks. Most organizations treat the warehouse as liability. Nowadays, warehousing has become an important element in commercial enterprises, which has brings benefits to the organizations.
Introduction
Warehousing was once considered as a liability to the organization as it would cost the companies much expense. Previously, in the time in which just-in time gain fame in industries, warehousing was considered a weak link in the supply chain and was thought to demise. However, currently the concept of warehousing is changing as it is now gaining an important part in the supply chain.
Discussion
In the interview of vice president of supply chain operations for Nabisco, he has observed after reflecting on the new role of warehousing that there are many companies finding that the concept of warehousing that has thought to be a liability move to a new thought of warehousing as a competitive weapon in the marketplace (2001).
In addition, director of the Warehouse Research Center of Miami University of Ohio, commented that he expected that warehousing would likely to demise however there have been a number of opportunities are fantastic with the emersion of the dotcoms which has brought the changes in the thought of warehousing as most of the dotcoms are building warehouses and realized that they need to go through warehouses (2001)
In the past years, conventional wisdom held that if a company had a great internal supply chain, it could win the competitive battle. (2001) However, with the emergence of e-commerce and the tight pressures to squeeze costs out of the supply chain, it's no longer enough to be efficient within your company's four walls. Companies today need an efficient supply chain from end to end, that is, from the purchase of raw materials to the point where product reaches the consumer or end user. Any failure at any point along this supply chain process can cause to failure to the whole company.
However, warehousing has gain its prominence with the development of e-commerce as increasingly the supply chain are now relying more on warehousing. Consumers today are demanding 24-hour delivery and flocking to another company's Web site if their orders are delivered late or damaged that companies are squarely pressured on the warehouse to deliver (2001).
Many warehouses are ramping up to meet e-commerce needs by installing new fulfillment equipment and investing in other technologies. Picking and shipping methods are being upgraded, too. Customer service has become of the utmost importance in today's environment, and warehouses increasingly are being tasked to manage call centers. In addition, with the increased returns generated by the Internet, they are playing a lead role in developing and executing reverse-logistics programs.
In addition, warehousing is becoming prominent as more and more activities are occurring within them. president of Princeton, NJ-based Boyd Company Inc., has also observed that many of the companies are not only performing traditional warehousing functions, but many of the companies he observed are bringing in functions that are traditionally located at corporate headquarters into the warehouse (Supply Chain Management Review, 2001). These activities includes back office operations, customer service, call centers, accounting departments and editorial functions like producing manuals that go into packaging for consumer electronics products.
Conclusion
Today, with these reasons, warehousing that was once thought as a liability to the company has become an important part of the companies. Warehousing has increasing prominent to the success of any company.
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