What is a Warehouse?
A warehouse is a large storage unit where products are stored after shipping or manufacturing. Warehouses are commercial properties that shipping companies or global retail brands own. Operations like product storage, product processing, and subsequent delivery are carried out in a warehouse.
Significance of Warehouse in an E-commerce Shipping and Delivery
Strategically placed warehouses provide brands with lucrative advantages as they can decrease the delivery transit time. Pre-stocking in a warehouse also allows a brand to meet unforeseen spikes in demand.
- Reduced transit times: Owning a warehouse or collaborating with a shipping company that has a warehouse in a high-demand city is highly beneficial for a brand. Products can be delivered quickly, in record time.
- Extra storage space: A company can use a warehouse to pre-stock products. It acts as an additional storage space for brands. Furthermore, when the order rate increases abruptly, delivering locations close to a warehouse can be serviced swiftly.
Prerequisites of Warehouse and How It Works
Warehouses are responsible for stocking, processing, and disbursing a product. Some of the prerequisites of a warehouse are:
- Sufficient staff
- Enough space to accommodate goods
- Equipment like pallets, forklifts, and service carts
- Adequate safety measures to safeguard goods
- Proper utility facilities
- Temperature-controlled storage (if required)
- Space for trucks and other modes of transport
The three-step process in which a warehouse works has been further explained below:
- Stocking: Products the warehouse receives are stocked strategically as per their delivery date.
- Processing and delivery: Products go through a pre-determined processing lifecycle, where their attributes are updated in a centralized system and further categorized per delivery date, courier route, and so on. The disbursal of a product follows this process at the named date.
Use Case with Warehouse
Some use cases of a warehouse have been listed below.
- A brand located in Manila sends a product to Davao City. The product is initially received in a warehouse in the mentioned city, then processed and distributed by the warehouse.
- A Sydney-based shoe manufacturing company decides to pre-stock products in a warehouse located in Melbourne to meet unforeseen demands.