Warehouse Management and Operations in Supply Chain

Posted on Jan 27, 2025 in Physical Education

Warehouse Management in Supply Chain

Staying in the warehouse center of the supply chain, warehouse management plays a vital role. Warehouses maintain, guard, and store products and supplies. The warehouse primarily adds value to products. It is different from a store. A store only has one technical and complex process. Warehousing requires technical processes such as inventory, enhancement, and encoding. Products leaving the warehouse are not from the same accounting field.

Warehouse Operation Modalities

Today, in view of the development of commerce, certain specializations exist in the areas.

Modalities:

  1. Own store
    • Advantages: Full control of products
    • Disadvantages: Low occupancy rate, high maintenance cost
  2. External store
    • Advantages: Free maintenance, controlled cost
    • Disadvantages: Uncertainty in control, communication difficulties, image risk in delivery to the final consumer
  3. Joint stock
    • A logistics operator successfully achieves this. The first necessary strategic alliance is to make it part of the business, sign a confidentiality contract, and establish a medium and/or long-term relationship.

Warehouse Phases

  • Reception: Physical and documentary verification, sorting by area, counting and weighing (random), issuing a dispatch note.
  • Dispatch: Conditioning products, vehicle loading, route planning, load stowage.
  • Storage: Entry into inventory, division, classification in packs, picking (order preparation), packaging.

Infrastructure and Equipment

The floor and the roof are important parts of a warehouse, forming part of what is substantial to the warehouse.

  • Rent: Resistance calculation, operational capacity, and long-term. Static to withstand large loads. It is normally built with reinforced concrete covered with a slab.
  • Roof: This is built in a shed based on a structure, more or less 12 to 15 meters high.

The equipment is divided into 3 parts: reception, storage, and dispatch.

Equipment in Reception

  1. Pallet trucks: Transfer of pallets (manual and semi-automatic)
  2. Scales and balances: Weighing of pallets and packages
  3. Forklift: For transferring pallets to the storage area

Storage Equipment

  1. Pallet trucks
  2. Forklift: The most functional, useful, and adaptable. The propulsion of these equipment are: gasoline, gas, oil (for open spaces), and electric (for closed spaces). Each one is designed for a specific environment.
  3. Rack: Rack furniture
    1. Selective: Direct access to all stored pallets
    2. Drive-in: Uses a compact shelving unit. No minimum aisles. Ideal for low-turnover products. Here, there is a greater quantity of homogeneous characteristics.
    3. Shelving for picking (order preparation): It is built based on regulated angle beams. They are not very high. It is not gigantic furniture. It is for putting loose and open packages (depending on the item).
    4. Pallet flow: (Dynamic shelving) Acts by gravity. It has a roller system. This is used for operations using FIFO (First In, First Out).
    5. Push back: Combination of selective and flow. They are larger blocks, closer together. It also has a system with movement.
    6. Cantilever: For using long and/or bulky packages
    7. Self-supporting warehouse: It is not only a warehouse, but also a determined concept. The slab begins as modules. Storage modules meet in large quantities of racks. Advantages: Flexible spacing, functional to disassemble, easy to assemble, has no roof or walls, large capacity, useful.
    8. Mobile closet: Ideal for archiving. 100% mobile. Optimum use of space. It works with a minimum of aisles. It has levers to move it.
  4. Conveyor belts or bands: Continuous mobilization, high performance, economical. They are used to connect the reception area with dispatch, when there is a high and permanent flow.