Do you know decentralized warehousing and how it helps transform global logistics and businesses daily? This warehousing model distributes your inventory across multiple locations, boosting your delivery times, reducing expense costs, and improving customer satisfaction.
Let’s take a more profound look at its characteristics, unique benefits, and advantages it can bring to your business:
What Is Decentralized Warehousing?
Decentralized warehousing is when you use multiple distribution centers instead of only one, usually known as a centralized warehouse.
Having a distributed storage infrastructure ensures that you can take advantage of faster delivery times and the ability to quickly adapt to changes. Having multiple distribution centers allows you to be strategically closer to your customers (customer-centric warehousing) and use different routes on demand.
As an expert warehousing company, we have access to large logistics center networks letting us offer you flexible warehousing services that suit your businesses best.
Benefits of using multiple distribution centers in supply chain management
Many companies choose decentralized warehousing because of the many benefits that it brings to the business. Let’s explore these benefits and how each helps your business stay competitive:
Faster Delivery Times
Because goods are stored in different places across a regional warehouse network, you are able to deliver your products faster and easier.
Having different warehouse locations also means that you can choose some that are closer to your clients. For example, if you have a big clientele in El Paso, Texas, delivery will be faster from a warehouse here, than from a centralized location in another city.
By reducing the distances, you also:
- Cut delivery times
- Enhance customer satisfaction
- Improve your brand’s name and customer loyalty
You can learn more about how distributing inventory across various locations improves delivery times in this article.
At EP Logistics, we have warehouses in different cities in Mexico and the U.S. so your business has access to efficient distributed storage infrastructure, and ensures your customers receive their products on time.
Cost Savings
Having multiple locations, closer to your customers, also helps your business consume fewer resources, and access more cost-effective transportation and shipping fees for shorter distances.
It also reduces fuel consumption, and driver hours and overall helps you cut costs because it eliminates the need for long-haul shipments.
With decentralized locations, your business can apply different regional storage strategies to:
- Save in fuel
- Plan for shorter delivery routes.
- Count on local inventory to avoid more expensive shipping fees.
- Improve overall operations, avoiding unneeded expenses.
Our team at EP Logistics can help your business implement both effective techniques for inventory management and regional storage strategies to keep your logistics expenses optimized and your customers happy.
Supply Chain Resilience
Another advantage of having a logistics center network instead of a centralized location is that you can stay prepared to respond to unexpected changes and obstacles across your supply chain.
This improves your business adaptability because of the locations that are able to respond in case any challenge arises, and another location becomes unavailable.
Having your inventory distributed across multiple distribution centers, allows you to:
- Respond to any chain of supply disruptions like natural disasters and port congestions.
- Keep your operations running even when one of the locations becomes unavailable.
- Maintain the availability of your products at all times, even during peak seasons and despite any external factors.
This is why at EP Logistics, as an experienced logistics company, we offer you services specifically designed to optimize your supply chain with distributed storage.
Industries Leveraging Decentralized Warehousing
With global commerce quickly growing every day, more industries are choosing to use decentralized warehousing to improve their operations and boost their customer satisfaction.
From pharmaceuticals to retail and e-commerce, decentralized warehousing significantly improves operations in all industries, taking into consideration the impact of customer proximity on logistics efficiency through multiple warehouses.
Let’s look at some examples:
E-commerce
E-commerce is one of the fastest-paced industries nowadays, therefore having fast, and reliable delivery is crucial.
Inventory management across multiple locations is a fantastic option for this type of company because it lets you meet your fast delivery customer’s expectations.
It also enables your business to keep up with demand during the high peak season, holidays, and other sales events by enhancing your delivery routes, times, and speed using the warehouse closer to your customers.
Our warehousing services are designed to grow your business and to be scalable and flexible according to your current market needs and goals.
Besides, we also offer complimentary services crucial for e-commerce fulfillment to enhance your operations and experience like real-time technology integration, inventory management strategies implementation, reliable pick and packing and reverse logistics.
Retail
Another good example of how using decentralized warehousing helps businesses improve their supply chain and productivity is looking at the retail industry.
Retailers can take advantage of regional warehouse networks to make sure they have stock available across different locations and warehouses.
This allows them to avoid overstocking, transfer goods between warehouses when necessary, or adjust supply origins for delivery to respond to sudden market shifts and unforeseen challenges.
EP Logistics offers your business fully customizable multi-warehouse logistics to adapt to your unique business needs and goals, so you can have control over your operations as you need.
Manufacturing
Manufacturers also benefit from having a distributed storage infrastructure across multiple locations.
Having a decentralized warehousing model helps them make sure their production lines are always up and running, avoiding delays and misunderstandings with other parties.
It also allows them to have the inventory closer to their facilities to reduce downtimes and improve overall productivity.
With multiple warehouses and over 20 years of experience in supply chain optimization, we overlook all your operations, ensuring that your goods are always in stock from the moment of manufacturing until they reach your customer’s doorstep, always on time.
How to Implement Decentralized Warehousing
If you are looking to transition from centralized warehousing (one unique location) to decentralized warehousing (multiple distributed locations), you will need to plan the expansion before taking action.
Here are some tips and steps that will help you succeed in your implementation:
- Evaluate Your Current Operations: The first step is to analyze and audit your current operations to learn where you are currently standing and identify opportunities, challenges, and points of improvement along your supply chain.
- Develop a Strategy for Regional or Local Storage: research what the best locations are for your base and potential customers. Choose the closest locations for your multiple distribution centers based on demand, patterns, and historical data.
- Take advantage of Technology: Consider using technologies such as warehouse management systems (WMS) and real-time inventory tracking, to help you accurately manage your inventory across multiple locations.
- Partner up with Expert teams: Partnering with reliable and experienced logistics companies, like EP Logistics, will bring their expertise to the table. Helping you better plan and design strategies that best suit your business according to its goals and specific industry challenges.
EP Logistics is an expert in warehousing, and we offer you strategically located warehouses along the U.S. and Mexico borders for convenient storage and delivery of your goods.
We also guide you and help you with the planning and design of all the strategies needed to manage your logistics center network and include the implementation of the best technologies to improve your supply chain.
Challenges in Decentralized Warehousing
Along with benefits, decentralized warehousing also has its challenges, however getting to know them helps you plan accordingly to easily overcome them.
These are the most common challenges for decentralized warehousing:
- Higher Setup Costs: Distributed storage infrastructure means having more locations, which implies more rent, storage, and staff expenses. It is a higher initial investment but with a great benefit in the long term.
- Complex Coordination: Dealing with multi-warehouse logistics requires managing multiple locations, staff, schedules, and third parties. Great logistics management strategies in place are required and the use of technologies that facilitate the process is strongly recommended.
- Inventory Balancing: Also, efficient inventory management strategies are a must when having multiple distribution centers to ensure stock levels stay optimal in all locations, avoid overstocks and understocks, and keep an eye on the safety of all the goods.
EP Logistics has extensive experience helping businesses plan ahead to overcome these challenges, our services include the implementation of real-time technologies for better inventory control as well as the planning and implementation of customized inventory management techniques for your business.
Technology’s Role in Decentralized Warehousing
Technology plays a key role in almost every aspect of our lives nowadays, and logistics operations are no exception.
Advanced technologies are essential in decentralized warehousing to better manage multiple locations, inventory levels, schedules, and resources.
The main technologies that boost your warehousing are:
- Warehouse Management Systems (WMS): It ensures your inventory levels are always optimal and ensures your operations are running smoothly across multiple distribution centers.
- Real-Time Tracking: This helps you monitor your goods at all times and across different locations for better inventory management and to help you optimize routes from your logistics center network.
- Analytics: Analytic tools study and compare historical data to improve your stock allocation, which helps you cut unnecessary expenses and reduce overall costs.
Our warehousing and fulfillment services at EP Logistics are integrated with these technologies to support your regional storage strategy better and enhance your supply chain efficiency.
Comparing centralized warehouses to multiple storage locations
To summarize, let’s take a look at the main difference between centralized and decentralized warehousing so you can easily identify the model that will suit the current needs and goals of your business.
Here are some key considerations when choosing between a single central warehouse and several regional warehouses:
Centralized Warehousing
- A Central, unique location is used to keep up with demand from all regions.
- Lower initial investment and operational expenses.
- Slower deliveries, less flexibility, and higher transportation expenses.
Decentralized Warehousing
- Distributed storage across multiple warehouses at strategic locations.
- Faster delivery times and reduced shipping costs due to shorter delivery distances.
- More flexibility and ability to adapt and overcome challenges related to the supply chain.
Feel free to reach out to us at EP Logistics if you need help evaluating which model would work best for your business, to learn about warehousing vs storage, or to find out more about what logistics providers do.
Why Choose EP Logistics for Decentralized Warehousing?
With many years of experience and a happy, satisfied client base, we are more than a logistics and warehousing company. We guide you in understanding what outsourced logistics are and how they boost your profits.
We focus on becoming your partner so you can have peace of mind knowing all your logistics operations are being handled with care and by a professional team.
Besides our warehousing services, can be customized to adapt to your business requirements and needs, and we can help you transition to decentralized warehousing with our expertise in:
- Strategies for implementing a network of warehouses in different regions.
- Creation of fast and efficient logistics center networks.
- Managing your inventory across multiple locations in real-time.
We ensure your business is prepared to overcome any logistic challenge coming its way, staying ahead of the competition with efficient operations, top technologies, an expert team, and reliable services.
With EP Logistics as your partner, your regional warehouse network can be built with confidence and with quality and your budget in mind.
Whether optimizing delivery times or enhancing supply chain and customer satisfaction, we got you covered.
Contact us at EP Logistics and start improving your operations for a competitive, productive supply chain today.
