PROSPECTS OF WAREHOUSING

PROSPECTS OF WAREHOUSING

PROSPECTS OF WAREHOUSING – Warehouses were neglected in the past. According to John Worman (1980), “Warehouses were manned by unskilled labourers, with no records”.

The warehouses were intended to service other processes. Often located a great distance from the process they were supposed worthy of the attention of the management. Even today many people have not yet realized that stores and materials are really bank notes converted into real and tangible assets and that the space, the material occupy is expensive to provide”.

There is nowadays an urgent need to apply scientific principles to the running of any stores; function.

Let us look forward. The stores of the future will need to be a tailor-made unit just as flexible in its outlook as the factory, ever on the search for improvement and never satisfied with present methods.

The mental approach to the handling problems will need to be scientific and, as with the process in any factory, the administration set-up has to be the handmaidens of the function not its mistress.

Goods movement needs be realised as a scientific problem. The future of warehousing points more and more engineering principles. More and more engineers will need be employed with it contrives, not only because more machinery will be used, but also because of its affirity with production.

It is also clear that warehouses have to be sited on fast main trunk roads.

We have to consider also, new ideas in packaging which influence shape of the articles, and automation of records.

Thus, the application of scientific methods to all activities will mean new thinking by every one, from policy maker to operators, in order that cost can be reduced to their barest minimum both at the separate state of manufacture and distribution and also at the total process.

All of this promises a very existing future for all who are connected with the stores function.