Storage and Distribution

Storage and Distribution in a Warehouse

Table of Contents

Introduction3

My visited Warehouse3

Main Functions of the Warehouse4

Storage of goods4

Protection of goods5

Financing5

Performance measurements used for each of the three functions5

Order picking frequency6

Rate of Order fulfilment6

Rate of Loss and Damage6

Space Utilization7

Business Growth7

Delivery Timeliness7

Performance measurements used to support and improve the performance objectives7

Rack Structure9

Storage/Retrieval Machine10

Conclusion10

Storage and Distribution in a Warehouse

Introduction

A warehouse is defined as a commercial place that is used for storage of goods. It is a storage facility which stores products and material for the further distribution to consumers or other related businesses. Another terminology used for warehouse is “Distribution Centre”( Kirkwood, 2003, pp.78). The overall procedure of a warehouse includes; coordination of the arriving products, the storage and accommodating of the products, and in the end, the distribution of products to their relevant destination. Every warehouse is standardized on through ISO standard.

Warehouses are actually used for storage purposes by product makers, importers, exporters, sellers and transport businesses. There are usually loading docks at warehouses in order to load and unload large amount of products. Moreover, they have fork lifters and cranes to move the products (Baker & Baker,1993, p.32-39). The products that are stored at the warehouses may include finished goods, raw materials, packing materials, spare parts, or other components associated with any kind of business field.

My visited Warehouse

The warehouse that I visited as a part of my college assignment was Seabridge. The core competencies of the company include Overnight Express Groupage and Full Load Freight across Ireland. The company has five warehouses in various cities across the UK, and one in Dublin. These ware houses provides scheduled departure and arrival services from all the destinations.

Seabridge warehouse of Dublin provides the state of the art and latest facilities of warehousing. The layout of the warehouse is spread on an area of 100,000 sq. ft. Staff of the warehouse is both trained and certified and is approximately 1200 in number. The purpose of the warehouse is to provide high quality storage and movement of goods of various companies, pick and pack service, and break bulk service.

Competent staff of the warehouse guarantees that the products are moved and stored in the right way. The warehouse provides standard service which includes quality check, inspection, repacking, storage analysis and non technical adjustment. It provides transparent and clear information to its customers and clients in order to maintain their confidence and visibility. The warehouse is automated to some extent, but not completely.

Main Functions of the Warehouse

Warehousing is an essential component of business supply chain. This chain comprises of facilities, delivering, of products from producer to the customer and all necessary components that come in between. Seabridge warehouse provides valuable functions; some of them are as follows:

Storage of goods

The sole aim and function of this warehouse is to store and preserve huge amount of goods and materials. The large area of the warehouse enables the facility of this huge amount. These goods are stored here from their production time or buying till their utilization or ...