The Importance Of Pop-Up Warehouses In Times Of Supply Chain Uncertainty
In today’s era of uncertainty, business agility has quickly become the differentiator that helps organizations set themselves apart. Right now – and rightly so – the focus is on the disruptions caused by coronavirus. But let’s be clear, coronavirus is one in a long and growing list of destabilizing events with which businesses everywhere must now contend.
To this list, we could add Brexit, looming trade wars, social and political upheavals, natural disasters, and weather events linked to climate change. Could this list be longer? I’m sure it could be. But the point is that your ability as a business to respond to change is now – if it wasn’t already – a top of mind business concern that is directly linked to your ability to survive and thrive.
Resiliency and the warehouse
Companies are facing unprecedented disruptions and swings in demand that require new levels of supply chain resiliency. These swings can go up and down – with wide variability across regions. Many products are suddenly in far more demand (like toilet paper and hand sanitizers and food necessities such as rice). Other luxury products (like cars, and cloths) are dropping.
These shifts require companies to react swiftly to keep the right supplies in the right markets. But doing so is difficult when the workforce in such flux. Some workers are sick, some need to isolate, others are working at home. Customers, meanwhile, are turning sharply toward e-commerce – which requires businesses to ramp up if they’re not already there.
New warehouses, faster
Responding to these challenges, many companies, are looking to get their products closer to the customer by quickly standing up new warehouses to more effectively meet demand at the ground level. Pop-up warehouses, as they are known, can be erected quickly to serve, say, increased demand around urban centers where more and more customers want to order direct rather than going to a retail outlet.
They are looking at timeframes of weeks, not months to be up and running with a new warehouse at a new location. Increasingly, such warehouses are not just bare bones entities with four walls to house inventory. Rather, they’re designed to support full pick, pack and ship processes in a highly standardized way.
And there are key warehousing processes warehouse processes that they are focusing on:
Inbound processing: with support for putaway capabilities (rack, mezzanine, bulk) and internal routing
Storage and operations: with support for managing physical inventory, replenishment, scrapping, and ABC analysis (or simple slotting)
Outbound processing: with support for managing transportation units, shipping cockpits/dock appointment scheduling, and packing and loading
Business system integration and visibility are key
Ideally, any pop-up warehouse you stand up is also integrated into larger business processes and systems such as business planning, ERP, and more. With more and more customers requiring an e-commerce option, this integration is table-stakes. Indeed, customer who have grown up on e-commerce expect to track the status of orders from order to delivery. They expect returns to be managed without hassles. And if you want to keep customers, you need the ability to calculate delivery times, and live up to your promises. All of which requires integration across often disconnected parts of the business.
Integration, in the end, also helps turn the temporary into the permanent. What might start out as a pop-up warehouse may turn into a longer-term facility that can serve customers and the business well into the future. After all, it’s difficult to tell where today’s economy – with all of its disruptions and challenges – is taking us. Today’s businesses need to be ready to go in whatever direction is available to help serve customers better and ensure continued growth.
