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Malaysia needs more world-class warehouses to
develop a successful manufacturing supply chain.
Freight Mark (M) Sdn Bhd operations and
warehouse manager G. Vizayer Raj said half of
the warehouses in Port Klang were still manually
operated.
“They need to be of world-class standard and to
be at par with the multinational logistics
players in this country.
“Despite just-in-time (JIT) production,
warehousing continues to play a critical role
for companies worldwide,” he said in his
presentation entitled World Class Warehousing
and Inventory Management at the recent Supply
Chain Conference.
Vazayer said world-class warehousing required
equipment, metrics and methodology to increase
efficiency, accuracy and productivity.
“Previously, effective warehousing was a
relatively straightforward progression of
receiving, storing and shipping.
“But, in today's age of e-commerce, supply chain
integration, globalisation and JIT methodology,
warehousing has become more complex and costly,”
Vizayer said.
He said warehouses were now “flow-through”
centres where products would be offloaded,
stored temporarily for one or two day and then
shipped to customers.
“Warehouses are now an integral part of the
supply chain. Planning is important and
buildings need to be set-up for movement rather
than just a place for storage,” he added.
Vizayer said cross-dock labelling was an
important part of this flow through concept of
warehousing.
Cross docking is a term use to describe the
unloading of merchandise from one trailer and
immediately distributing the goods to one or
more waiting trailers for shipment to a store or
customer.
“The ideal situation would be when product
shipments come into the warehouse pre-labelled
with their destination.
“A recent survey showed 46% of cross-dock
labelling was being done by suppliers and 55% of
inbound orders which were planned against
shipping notices.
“To be world-class manufacturers their supply
chain, which include warehouses must be able to
respond quickly to customers' requests,
sometimes within 24 hours,” he said, adding that
modern warehouses now use warehouse management
system.
“The usage of bar code systems can track
products from the time they enter into the
warehouse, random bin locations, workers
efficiency and other kinds of useful data,” he
said. |
