Is your warehouse space running out? Are your warehouse costs rising? Without investing in the optimization of your warehouse layout and design, you might soon find yourself in a sub optimal situation with less efficient processes, high handling and warehousing costs, and subpar customer services.
There are a lot of reasons why you might want to evaluate and redesign the operation and layout of your warehouse, but they all come down to one thing – increasing or securing your organization competitive advantage. And there is no better way to do this than to seek the service of warehouse design consultants.
Many warehouse owners are often disappointed with warehouse design consultants since they don’t really know the reality of things. Their expectations are often quite demanding or they have a misconception about the service.
So, what are some of the most common expectations from warehouse design consultations?
The Expectation: They provide only design consultancy. Most organizations assume that a warehouse design consultant provides only design consultation services because they are expert in this field.
The Reality: Consultants are all-rounded
professionals. The above expectation isn’t true since consultants provide other services such as warehouse and inventory management and others. Their job isn’t specialized in one area as these companies have a huge team of professionals that cater to different aspects of your warehouse. In fact, they have the first-hand experience when it comes to the management of your warehouse.
The Expectation: High costs. Organizations believe that hiring a professional design consultant is expensive and will only add to their expenditure.
The Reality: Cost is Reasonable. The cost of hiring warehouse design consultants is not as high as people assume. Actually, when you consider the time and space you save, as well as the other benefits like the organization of your warehouse, the cost of hiring a consultant becomes low. Their benefits far outweigh the cost.
The Expectation: Immediate turn-around time. Most businesses want to hire a professional design consultant today and see the results tomorrow. This is a great misconception.
The Reality: It takes time to change. It will take time before you begin to enjoy the fruits of hiring a professional warehouse designer. First, the designer needs to learn your warehouse, and then they need to create a plan for solving the issues that are consuming your space. This will take a few weeks or even months if you have a large warehouse. This will also depend on your warehouse current design and what needs to be changed.
The Expectation: Only minimal change will be done. Some business owners assume that warehouse design experts will do just a few changes to their warehouse and thus, don’t see the need of hiring one.
The Reality: Changes vary from minimal to many. Again, this will depend on the current status of your warehouse and the improvement it requires. Some warehouses need a total make over to make them function at their maximum capacity, which also adds up to the total turnaround time. On the other hand, some warehouses might need just a few changes to become efficient.
The Expectation: Only an e-commerce warehouse needs help. This is especially common with people who own physical stores. They assume that only an e-commerce business store needs re-designing.
The Reality: All facilities need help: Other facilities, as well as warehouses, need assistance from warehouse design consultants. These include all outlets that distribute goods, physical stores, and any other business that handle the large and small volume of goods.
The Expectation: Warehouse design consultancy is optional. It is not a must for a business to seek the service of a professional design consultant. This is a misconception of most business owners since they believe that they can design their warehouse by themselves.
The Reality: Warehouse design is a must. The reality of the matter is that warehouse design consultancy is a critical part of your business. Therefore, this is a must if you want your business to be successful. The reason behind this is that a professional designer will help you design a warehouse that will suit your business needs.
The Expectation: Warehouse design and layout don’t affect profitability. Facility layout and design don’t affect adaptability, productivity, and profitability of your business since profit is affected by the number of sales made and the cost of producing the goods.
The Reality: The design and layout of your warehouse do affect the profitability of your business. This is because the profit is affected by the number of goods sold, the ability to provide goods on time, and the cost of production. When your warehouse has sufficient space, you are able to produce goods in large number – decreasing the cost of production. A well-designed warehouse also ensures that goods are always available for delivery whenever there is a demand.
The best decision you can make is to hire warehouse design consultants to help you out.
The Expectation: There is a set standard for designing a warehouse. Most warehouse owners assume that they need to design their warehouse to resemble that of their rival or another business that is doing well.
The Reality: Every warehouse is unique: You should consider your warehouse design from the angle of your products, material handling equipment, and process flows. Determining the current flow of goods and projecting the future flow helps professionals to design a warehouse that will work for your business.
The Expectation: Warehouse design consultants work on their own. This is one of the major misconceptions that warehouse owners’ believe. They assume that when they hire a professional, they will leave all the work to them.
The Reality: Warehouse design consultants work with your team. The best company will always work closely with your team. They will seek to hear your input, your goals and vision, and how you want your warehouse to look like. Of course, they will bring their own expertise to help develop your warehouse and make it more effective.
As you have seen, there are a lot of misconceptions about warehouse design consultants that need to be addressed. The only way to get the truth of the matter is to consult a professional rather than listening to hearsays.
Many businesses in the UAE use the services of consultants to give solutions and advice targeting their warehouse layout structure and design.
Warehouse owners stand to enjoy a lot of benefits when they consult the best warehouse design consultants in the country. Some of the benefits that you can reap include:
Currently, there is a shortage of European quality warehousing design across the UAE industrial markets especially in the e-commerce, logistics, FMCG, and general trading industries.
The lack of top-quality facility might prove to be a barrier for development in the short and medium term. Despite the challenging conditions, there is still great levels of investment from both the private and government sectors. This investment is probably due to the professional warehouse design consultants facilitating the development of warehouses that meet the demand of different sectors.
If you are faced with this poor warehousing issue today, you can choose to either get a space that meets your needs or re-design your existing facility to your preference.
Warehouse design consultants are helping the UAE warehouse sector in various ways including:
As you can see, warehouse design consultants play a key role in the development of great warehouses not only in Dubai and UAE in general, but in every part of the world.
If your operations are in the UAE, finding the perfect consultant might be a tiring process. Therefore, you need to know how to go about it.
We’ve recently published an article on how to identify the best warehouse consulting services provider in the country. Below is an excerpt from the article on how you can find them.
Learn more on which facilities or businesses benefit from warehouse consulting services here.
All the businesses or facilities mentioned in the previous section need to follow just a few steps to get the best out of the warehouse design services from their prospect consultants. If you are one of them, here’s what you should do:
If you want to learn more about these steps, kindly visit our blog “E-Commerce Fuels Demand For Warehouse Design Efficiency”.
You need to do the right thing the first time when designing your warehouse. This doesn’t matter whether you are building a new facility or expanding your existing warehouse, or reworking on a worn out one. That’s why you need to get a professional to develop and implement the plan.
With that said, you should note that every project is unique. But the overall objective of designing an efficient warehouse is to maximize:
“How can I achieve this?” you may ask. By hiring warehouse design consultants to guide you the process of designing your warehouse and where to build it, ensure you get value for your investment.
Learn more about getting the warehouse design right the first time here.
The range of services warehouse design experts offer could vary from one consultant to another. We at LOC8, for example, review live warehouse operations and offer solutions for enhancing your warehouse efficiency. On the other end, we supply a comprehensive warehouse design and implementation of auto high bay operations for you to enjoy better performance that translates to increased profit. Therefore it is best to get to know your consultant before actually hiring them for the job. That will save you time and energy, and a huge deal of disappointment when the design is not carried out as expected.
So, if you are ready to hire one for your facility, why not contact us? We are one of the leading warehouse design consultants in the UAE. Our professionals are well-trained in warehouse management and have been in the industry for decades, enabling them to help you improve your warehouse functionality and processes.