Warehouses integrate with transport modes

ALAN PEAT LOOKING AT the global trends in warehousing impacting on the SA industry, Graham Smit, GM (warehousing) at Kuehne & Nagel, summarised his view in eight succinct bullet points: • Move away from costly in-house specialisation; • Trend towards 4PL (fourth party logistics) partnership – for knowledge and specialist capabilities; • Focus on core business to ensure lowest per unit cost of production – therefore definite trend to outsourcing warehousing operation; • Shift to a mentality of “risk and reward sharing” - where gain share drives performance of partners; • Requirement for skilled and educated staff to operate efficient warehousing – and lean and efficiently-staffed operations; • Increase in throughput of product volumes of continually changing product lines - therefore the adaptability and flexibility of the warehouse operation increasingly important; • Integration of the warehouse with transportation modes to produce a stronger synergy; • Leveraging of the supply chain - using the warehouse as the central point of operations.