For many manufacturing companies, transportation consolidation in a warehouse is a key factor to success.
For many manufacturing companies, transportation consolidation in a warehouse is a key factor to success. With multiple suppliers, many companies find it is not practical to depend on JIT or “just in time” deliveries from a wide range of suppliers who may be shipping from locations all over the globe. For many, consolidating their suppliers goods in an offsite, 3rd party warehouse provides advantages in cost, speed, and availability while reducing the number of deliveries to manage at their own facility.
Some of the advantages of this strategy include:
- Supply Mixing – With all of their suppliers components stored in one place, daily or weekly deliveries to the factory can be configured in a single truck load, thereby saving space on the factory floor.
- Kitting – Components used in a sub-assembly can be configured at the warehouse before shipping, thereby eliminating this step internally.
- Smoothing of material flow – In a point to point supply chain, there are many variables that can impact delivery schedules. With multiple suppliers, the opportunity for a disruption can grow geometrically to the point of total chaos. By maintaining an inventory at a 3rd party warehouse, the operation can maintain a buffer that is faster to respond to changes in demand or disruptions at a supplier.
- Schedule Changes – Every manufacturer has experienced unplanned changes in demand from their customer. This can manifest itself in sharp increases in demand as well as the opposite drop in orders. Long supply chains on a global scale can make it next to impossible for a company to handle sharp increases or decreases in demand. Keeping the component supply consolidated in a single warehouse near the point of use helps to keep on site inventory at a manageable level.
- Protection in Emergency – While planning is important in managing a supply chain strategy, we all know that events that are beyond our control can easily upset even the most well thought out supply plan. Weather, political events, and natural disasters can combine to interrupt even the most sophisticated logistics plan. Maintaining a supply of components in a nearby warehouse can often mitigate or insulate the factory from short to intermediate term interruptions in supply.
In conclusion, outsourcing of supply chain management to a competent and experienced 3rd party logistics supplier can allow a manufacturing operation to focus on what they are making while leaving the issues of component supply procurement to people that are able to focus on what it takes to deliver “the right parts at the right time every time”.
At Eagles Air & Sea, we have centrally located warehousing within the greater Bangkok area and can manage your supply chain requirements in a cost effective and professional manner. Contact us at +66 (02) 790-4599 or via email at sales@eaglesthai.com for a no obligation consult of your supply chain requirements.
