Sounds + Food 'n' Retail

I'm still "on a break," but stumbled across this interesting titbit from a book on warehousing-practices. If you don't like reading lists, too bad because it's interesting, but I've also summarised the key-points in the end.

China

• Low labour and land-cost, but high equipment costs, translate into large (e.g. 250,000 square feet), low warehouses like in the US, but often lacking even a forklift.
• Certain goods like consumer electronics, are of such high value, have a short life-cycle, and thus a lower inventory-cost, that expenditure in state-of-the-art technology is justified.
• Certain cost-saving practices, like removing the pallets from shipments in order to ship more goods, cause some inefficiencies other countries, like, eh, re-adding pallets.

• A traditional focus on personal relationships and less on computational models, means there's a lack of data and opportunities for improving performance are not well-developed.
• The most active economic areas are separated by lots of water, which means lots of product conveyed by air (for high-value or time-sensitive products) or ship (for bulky items or commodities). The high costs associated with this, are incentives to consolidate freight.
• Therefore, more strong regional hubs, like in Hong-Kong and Singapore, are expected to emerge.

• High labour-costs and an inflexibility of the work force have lead European warehouses to be more advanced in terms of automation.
• A growing common market will also lead to more economies of scale in the future, leading to larger, centralised warehouses.

• Characterised by cheap labour and land-cost, but relatively expensive capital costs (machinery and the like) and an underdeveloped infrastructure (both physical & administrative).
• The markets being supplied are generally local and not very wealthy, which leads to the SKUs not being high cost and there being little incentive to increase efficiency through capital expenditure (IT).
• Global demand means that larger distribution centres are being built around large ports like Mumbai (Bombay). The lack of land there is leading to high prices, comparable to Singapore/Hong-Kong.

• Characterised by a culture of mass-consumption and a uniformity of the market and distribution infrastructure, which translates into large centralised warehouses and accelerating rates of product flow.
• Warehouses are often situated in the countryside surrounding metropolitan areas, which is cheaper, while being well-connected.
• A good telecommunications-infrastructure enables better supply-chain co-ordination; Warehouse management systems are generally advanced, and the rich data leads to better tracking and performance.
• High labour-cost are off-set by using cheaper migration-workers

• Due to a lack of land and high labour-cost, warehouses tend to be built high.
• Elevators are one bottleneck, caused by this style of building, however a Singapore warehouse has found a solution to this: A multi-floor facility with no automation or elevators, but, instead, a spiral truck ramp so that trailers may be docked at any floor (see pic). This does claim more land area, which must be recovered from above, and doesn't work well if trucks have to shuttle between multiple floors.
• While both Singapore and Hong-Kong act as hubs, Singapore is much more international, receiving goods from manufacturers all over Asia and shipping it to other countries; Hong-Kong receives mainly Chinese goods. Also, for the latter, many of the goods come in via trains and trucks, while leaving by ship or flight, while for Singapore it comes and leaves via sea and air.

• Labor costs are low, though not as low as in China, and the nature of its local economy and customers does not justify high equipment expenditure.
• The only exception is Mexico, which can quickly ship products to the US and keep its inventory low, thus justifying state-of-the-art technology.

• Labour costs are a factor when considering automation; automation is a factor when considering optimisation; optimisation is a worthwhile expenditure when dealing with high value goods with a high velocity.
• Cheap land seems a fundamental advantage, looking at the logistical nightmares that Singapore and other high-rise builders must be experiencing.
• Access by land will significantly decrease the cost of transport. Generally, a well-developed infrastructure means more access to wealthy markets and enables warehouses to store high-value/high velocity goods, which is good for them.