Mr. Reinhard Wind - modern warehousing in the middle east

The right way to design your warehouse

Gutenberg Publishing FZ-LLC
Dubai Media City, Al Thuraya Tower 2,
Office 1402, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

The “old way” of storing goods:
 2-3 pallet sizes high
 No air-condition
 Simple concrete flooring
 Messy and inefficient environment
 No IT-structure
 High staffing
 Low throughput
 Low investment costs

 No one wants to store goods for a long time.
 Warehouses become buffer zones.
 High throughput of goods need to be achieved.
 Total control of the stored goods needs to be
assured.
 Low staffing to safe costs.
 Value added work has to be performed in the
warehouse.
 All processes have to be defined well.
 Large loading/unloading space.


European set up Middle East set up
 Expensive space  Space is cheap
 Expensive labour  Labour is quite
 Extreme high inexpensive
throughputs for  Medium
serving highly performance
populated areas requirements
 High degree on
 Low degree of
Automation Automation

 There is always a trend of either outsourcing
or insourcing supply chain processes.
 When insourcing supply chain processes, the
industrial companies do their logistics.
 inhouse, when outsourcing they leave the
supply chain operations to 3PL providers or
other partners.
 Before investing into a warehouse other
options and trends need to be evaluated.

 The racking and the shelving depends on the
physical nature of the products.
 Storage on pallets, in boxes or as pieces
 Racking can be fed with fork lifts, VNAs or with
automation systems.
 The higher the racking is, the higher the quality
of the slab has to be
 These days 12-14 meter high racking is possible
to be operated with advanced “fork lifts”.
 With automation up to 50 meters are possible.
Then often “clad rack” constructions are being
built.

Automation is used at the best, when the
physical product always stays the same.
What can be automated in a warehouse:
 Storage of pallets
 Storage of boxes
 Storage of individual goods
 Transportation of pallets, boxes and goods
 Picking, Packing and labeling processes
 Etc.

 ERP systems (Enterprise Resource Planning)
in the entire company
 WMS (Warehouse Management Systems) in
the warehouse and distribution center
 Fleet Management solutions
 Network Management solutions
 RFID technology
 Etc.


Picking, packing and labeling very often is done in the
warehouse, rather than in the production site

The extreme scenario:
 All parts are supplied to a distribution center from
different parts of the world.
 The end product gets assembled for the individual
customer, country, event or sales region.
 The end product gets individually packed and labeled
(country wise, festive season, promotion, etc.).
 The end product gets shipped to the destination.


 Technically up to 50 meter high racking is
possible to be built.
 Then full automation needs to be in place.
 High bay warehouses are built in areas where
space is most expensive (urban areas in Europe).
 High security standards and high technical
standards need to be applied.
 High maintenance costs.
 High bay warehouse solutions are rather
expensive.


A distribution centre is well designed …
 When all processes are harmonized and
bottlenecks are not existing.
 When there is a sufficient redundancy
concept in place in case of technical failure.
 When only low staffing is required.
 When fast access to the goods is possible.
 When the control over the stored goods is
given at all times.

 Warehouses from Producers usually have given
and constant number of SKUs.
 Warehouses from 3PL providers have to cater
for various types of products from different
clients.
 It is always easy to design a warehouse for a
constant physical type of product.
 The more the physical product changes over
time, the higher flexibility is needed in the
warehouse.
 Multipurpose warehouses have ever changing
SKUs, clients and processes.

 Architects usually care about the building and
not so much about the detailed processes in
the warehouse.
 The ideal warehouse needs to be designed
from the inside out.
 The different shapes of the warehouse come
from the processes within the warehouse and
from the traffic access to the warehouse.


 An architect normally is not the expert for the
supply chain processes.
 Suppliers of racking and/or automation want
to sell their products. So they are valuable
advisors, but shall not be the consultants.
 The customer needs to know what he wants.
 The business model of the company needs to
be understood and considered.
 Automation is a tool and not an ego-thing.

 The ideal dimensions of a warehouse need to
be determined by multiple factors like the
processes, the nature of the warehouse, the
SKUs, the degree of automation, etc..
 Large size warehouses need to be segmented
towards the physical specification of the
product, the product type, the customer, etc.
 Step by step approach and modular views
help to master the challenges when designing
the warehouse.

 How to start designing the warehouse?
 Who pays for the inventory in the
warehouse?
 Who initiates the modernization in the
warehouse?
 Who pays the warehouse?
 What is the key factor for a multi purpose
ware house?


Reinhard Wind
Managing Director
AL Thuraya Tower 2, P.O.Box 502547
Dubai Media City
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
T: +971 55 109 2512
E: reinhard@gutenberg-dubai.com


Mr. Reinhard Wind - modern warehousing in the middle east

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