A warehouse is obviously a commercial building and therefore it is
used by those connected with business and trade such as manufacturers,
exporters, importers, stockists, and wholesalers, so on.
A warehouse is usually a very
large building; it has to be since it has keep umpteen kinds of goods for
future use by so many businessmen. And it is generally situated in industrial
areas so that their use can be effective.
Since goods have to be lifted high to be placed in some high docks,
loading docks, it will be equipped with cranes and forklifts. Movements of goods will not be possible
without these forklifts and cranes.
In India, a warehouse is also called godown.
While some small spare room may be sufficient for some small business,
large business necessarily needs bigger spaces to store its products; the
business man then rents a space for his purpose.
It must be clear that a warehouse is not a distribution center. A warehouse simply just stores goods and
nothing more; but, a distribution center not only stores but also deals with
orders and fulfills them.
There are two kinds of warehouses:
Centralized and Decentralized warehouses and we will know about them
later and now let us consider some fundamental facts about a warehouse.
No warehouse worth the name can exist without shelving and rack
systems which are effective in providing maximum storage capacity and easy work
flow. Access to the goods when needed in
time and maximum utilization of space for storage with proper equipments are
essential for managing warehouses.
Shelving and rack systems do require careful planning lest the workflow
gets affected impacting productivity. It is suggested that some specialist in
shelving may be consulted to avoid wastage of space, time and money.
There must be a climate control system without which frozen
products cannot be stored to profit. Refrigeration is integral to a warehouse
for enhancing its competency. There are products which degrade if exposed to
too much heat and for such products, refrigeration is inevitable; even for some
pharmaceutical products, refrigeration cannot be dispensed with.
With unforeseen heights of technological development, it is not at all difficult to get inventory control software that helps both the product owner and the owner of the warehouse---product owner need not necessarily be the owner of the warehouse—to find with no loss of time where his products, even individual units are placed and to know the number of product owners using the ware house, respectively.