The history of warehousing goes back to the times when large storages named granaries were used to store food items for long duration of time. With the growth of overseas trade and discovery of new routes to build business across the world storage and warehousing requirements have grown tremendously.
Warehouses operate in various ways, some of them are listed below.
Public warehouses: When the client pays a standard amount in order to store their commodity in a third party warehousing space it is called public warehousing.
Private warehouses: When the manufacturer owns the storage units and the operations and control fall under them, such kind of warehousing is a private warehousing system.
Leased warehouses: Some of the manufacturers take the store houses and godowns on lease for longer periods and this falls under the category of leased warehousing.
In contract warehousing the manufacturer takes the storage for rent regardless of the fact if they have used it or not. Until the expiration of the contract the warehouse is all theirs for use.
The most important thing for a warehouse is any form of product to be stored. The supply chain is organized with the help of means of transport such as trucks, railways, ships and other vehicles. The goods and commodities are then processed accordingly and then stored or moved in or out of the warehouse. The warehouse management is of utmost importance as after the manufacturer has received or exported the product it needs to be organised compactly into the space. This has to be done so as make the optimal use of the working space. The placement of commodities is on pallets so as to keep them mobile and manage their stacking. Warehouse India need to follow this tactic more often as there is a huge bulk of commodity and their urgent requirement can be met with such maneuvers.
Warehouse management is a very crucial aspect of the complete supply chain, especially in case of public and contract warehousing. The storages receive products from multiple manufacturers and traders and they have to be stored in discipline so as to not mix them up. The management has to be such that any product can be located and picked up at any given point of time as per requirement. The process also has to be swift as on some occasions the trading may have to be urgent. The other fact that has to keep in mind again is the optimal and economic usage of the storage space.
Apart from the regular business of storing products, warehouse is also involved in packaging and labeling of the products while they move in and out of the facility. For protection against damages and ensure a safe delivery of the items the packaging is of utmost importance. Along with this the packages have to labeled and tagged efficiently so that the management becomes easier. The tracking of the items needs to be smooth and labeling comes into play here when the identification solely depends on the quality of tagging.
After the product has been picked, the next stage is to process the item and ship it. The product is brought to the loading docks where they are loaded into various means of transport as required. The process of cross docking takes place in the staging area.
With the extensive growth of third party logistics, the supply chain India has obtained phenomenal growth. These logistics company try to cut out the costs and the headache of management from the manufactures and thrive as a successful industry. The need of the hour is efficient time management for good business and the logistics companies are its providers.