Does your warehouse have growing pains?

Growth as a business is important, it also causes huge headaches if not managed well.

How has your recent growth as an ecommerce fulfilment/ logistics/ distribution business affected your ability to maintain efficient and cost effective throughput?

Listed below are a few of the issues we see as the catalyst to our conversations with owners and senior management at businesses across the UK:

A change of business model needed to win new business

It is well documented that COVID lockdown has brought on the world of commerce with high street shopping reduced to nothing and digital transactions now the norm. The knock-on effect for traditional logistics companies has been nothing short of revolutionary. Traditional pallet-in / pallet-out operations are contacting us daily for support in re-modelling operations to provide the extra flexibility their customers now require to fulfill direct to consumer transactions. Transitioning to pick-and-pack is a big step and needs to be done properly to maintain customers and grow profit margins.

Acquiring new premises

We have seen multiple businesses acquiring extra space for storage and operational purposes over the last year. Often acquired in haste, these spaces now need to be properly assessed to see how to maximise their potential for business growth into an existing or updated working process. The problem of where to start with this transition is where we can step in and help.

Existing spaces not supporting changes in client needs

As a business adapts to its customer’s evolving needs the use of existing warehouse space needs to be re-evaluated. It is a challenge to do this whilst maintaining daily activity; a solid plan for transition is essential to not only support ongoing warehouse throughput, but also give managers within your business confidence that short-term pain will convert to long-term gain.

Business-case development

Investing money in warehouse optimisation and seeing into the future to predict the return on the investment is a massive challenge for business owners. We are supporting senior managers and boardrooms with capital investment project forecasting where we look at cost per pick station, per bay, per rack, and even per warehouse on the largest projects to forecast how long a business needs to wait to see a full return on their investment.

A challenge is only properly visualised when you can understand what your end goal needs to be. Breaking down what you need from your warehouse space is critical to any project you may undertake. Please call one of the Oakway team in your discussions, we’d be happy to support you with advice which you can take to form part of your forward planning. Please contact us and we’ll be in touch for a chat.