December 23 2015
A New Year a New Warehouse
By: Olivia Mitchell, Marketing Coordinator
The warehousing sector is on the rise with an increase of 106,000 new warehousing jobs over the past five years. According to Headlight Data, the following counties have the highest population of new warehousing jobs and are the best locations for warehouses in the United States:
- San Bernardino County, CA
- Riverside County, CA
- Greenville County, SC
- New Castle County, DE
- Luzerne County, PA
- Lehigh County, PA
- Mercer County, NJ
- Winnebago County, IL
- Henry County, GA
- Lexington County, SC
Finding a location for a new warehouse that logistically works for your organization is vital for operations and taking these locations into consideration is only the first step. The second step is to ask yourself, does it make sense to establish yet another satellite location, or does it make sense to consolidate the satellite locations and construct one large centralized warehouse?
For some, building another satellite facility may make sense, but consolidating and centralizing your warehouse with automation will benefit your operation in many more ways. Consolidating will result in reduced volume of work, due to the decline of logistical challenges of order picking from multiple locations. Additionally, integrating automation technology into the centralized warehouse will improve cube utilization, control and you will see large cost savings from faster turnaround time.
Gary Frank, vice president of automated systems, Westfalia Technologies, Inc. adds to the benefits of consolidation coupled with automation with this advice, “It is important to note that automation is not about taking dispersed warehouse operations, old processes, and bringing them together in one place. Automation revamps and dramatically improves processes so that large volumes of orders are handled with greater efficiency. By turning to automation to help consolidate warehouses, growing companies can more readily store and retrieve inventory, reduce operating costs, and promote proficiency across their supply chain.”
As you begin to prepare for the New Year, consider consolidating your warehouse operations into one centralized location through automation. The process will start with reviewing locations geographically, but ultimately you need to determine what is best for the efficiency of your day-to-day operations.
To take a closer look at the best warehouse locations in the United States, click here