In the supply chain of goods to the customer, the warehouse and the warehousing process taking place within it are important elements. Many companies, in order to improve their competitiveness achieved by reducing warehousing costs, face a dilemma and ask themselves the fundamental question: “Modernize, build a new warehouse, or use outsourcing services?”. Properly adapting warehousing technology to the specifics of distribution allows for reducing warehouse operating costs and enables competing in the market. Management staff and company boards need basic information and economic indicators to determine to what extent an investment related to building a new warehouse or modernizing an existing one is financially effective. Or perhaps it is better to use outsourcing (logistics company services)? The Institute of Logistics and Warehousing, meeting these expectations, has developed an application that allows for the quick determination of warehouse parameters for individual goods flows in a given period, for which a financial analysis is performed and compared with outsourcing costs. The obtained results allow for making a decision and answer the question: “Modernize, build a new warehouse, or use outsourcing services?”. The program is based on two types of input data: client data defining the parameters of goods flows, and expert (consultant) data defining the technological equipment used and the course of the warehousing process.
The article comes from the magazine “Logistyka” 5/2004.