Logistics for Warehousing

Many businesses don’t necessarily keep a great deal of product locally available. They rely on centralized warehouses and quick shipping response. This can help save on several costs. Maintaining supply at smaller depots in more locations would be more expensive. What it does introduce are some unique logistics challenges. More of your business relies on logistics for warehousing this way. Slip by a day on anything and the ripple effect can impact supply chains for multiple regions.

Saving Expense

Centralized warehousing is advantageous in a few ways. You reduce the number of locations you’re using, which cuts down on costs. You centralize management of your workforce. You rely on large warehouse locations where you can store more at a less expensive per-unit cost. Utilize smaller locations that are more spread out and the per-unit cost goes up. Larger warehouses can accommodate more cheaply than smaller ones.

You also centralize a large element of your logistics. This doesn’t just mean easier management, it also means easier documentation and more transparent reporting and accounting practices. All of this contributes to more streamlined management at the top.

Logistics Challenges

One of the advantages of more spread out and localized warehousing is that supply chains to individual locations can be more responsive. You lose some of that when centralizing. What you streamline in management, you make a little more complicated for endpoint employees.

The challenge of logistics for warehousing in this circumstance is to anticipate needs at a granular level. You need logistics that still operates and emulates the practices of local warehousing. This requires a great deal of communication and a sort of “second brain” with enough expertise and autonomy to direct supply chain management. That’s not always easy to find.

Contract logistics offers a potential solution. Contract logistics mean you work with a company that specializes in this kind of supply chain management. We act as an intermediary that streamlines the link between warehouse and local operations. This allows you to insert a secondary management system that emulates more the supply chain management localized warehousing used to provide. It allows you to do this without having to restructure the top-down logistics management you’ve already worked to streamline. It’s the best of both worlds.