By Manikandan Ramachandran
The festive season, synonymous with celebration and joy, unfolds a unique business landscape, marked by a surge in consumerism amplified through online shopping. With a notable 81% expressing a strong intent to shop online this festive season, the demand for warehousing solutions has never been more critical. As industries navigate the challenges of heightened demands, there emerges a critical imperative for businesses to choose warehouses with Grade A infrastructure which are designed to meet these surge in demands, with sustainable practices and will be cost efficient in the overall scheme of business.
This surge in demand affects various industries, from retail to food, electronics, and apparel. Therefore, the need for businesses to efficiently manage the inventory becomes particularly important during the festive season. Grade-A Logistics Parks built in strategic locations especially in the Tier-2 and Tier-3 markets play a crucial role in ensuring that products are readily available and delivered promptly to meet customer expectations during peak seasons. Noteworthy features of Grade A infrastructure include high roofs – allowing for storage up to 15 meters in height, optimizing vertical space usage, providing additional dockings, buildings with optimum aspect ratio, enabling IT infrastructure, apron & roads designed to take longest trucks and to cater to surge in 50% truck traffic during festive season among other things which will enable picking and packing activities faster which will further optimise the overall operations of the business.
Additionally, leading warehouse developers are pushing for innovation and improvements in all aspects of design, construction and amenities, with a prime focus on sustainability and responsible growth. According to the International Energy Agency, the industrial sector, including logistics and warehousing, contributes a significant 15% of India’s total CO2 emissions. As urbanization and consumption patterns evolve, the urgency to adopt sustainable practices becomes all the more apparent. Without streamlined warehousing operations and Grade A brown facilities, businesses might fail to meet customer demands or experience delays, resulting in loss of business to competition.
Grade A warehousing developers are designing the infrastructure to enable the scaling up the warehousing capacities and to meet the soaring demands during peak festive season for the facility occupiers through:
Multi-Tier Warehousing: To optimize the use of vertical space within a warehouse, multi-tier racking systems are becoming increasingly popular. These systems maximize storage capacity by using vertical storage space efficiently, significantly enhancing storage capacity without the need for extensive physical expansion. At their core, multi-tier racking systems leverage the height of the warehouse, while ensuring easy accessibility. During the intense demands of peak seasons, multi-tier systems offer an ingenious way to accommodate the surge in inventory without incurring any significant costs or challenges associated with expanding the warehouse physically.
Building Management System and Automation: The Vertical heights and docking systems will enable these businesses to go for usage of vertical space by implementing multi-tier racking systems, automation & sophisticated Building Management Systems which are poised to play a pivotal role during the festive rush. By intelligently controlling the inventory and using the automation, it not only ensures operational efficiency but also contributes to cost savings & improved productivity and reduction in errors which will enable these businesses to work effectively and efficiently, a factor that becomes especially crucial during peak demand periods.
Resource Optimization: The forward-thinking design of warehouses with amenities like parking facilities, wider apron & roads, etc. become particularly impactful during the festive season. As demand surges, these infrastructure elements play a key role to cater to the needs of businesses. The design of warehouses allowing for the integration of solar panels, rainwater harvesting, sewage treatment plants addresses the potential challenges associated with increased usage during peak periods.
As businesses work diligently to ensure a seamless festive season, it is essential to recognize the inherent challenges they encounter during the period of heightened demand. The sudden surge in customer orders strains existing operational capacities, that might lead to bottlenecks and delays. Efficient inventory management becomes complex as warehouses are required to efficiently balance stock levels. To combat these challenges, choosing the Grade A warehouses at strategic locations will help in reducing the overall supply chain costs and improve the position of our country in these parameters.
Warehouses also play a pivotal role in shaping the supply chain landscape of the future, ensuring that the products are readily available and efficiently delivered. Within the dynamic business realm, Industrial and Logistics Parks will remain at the forefront, driving innovation and efficiency to meet the needs of the modern consumer, even during the busiest shopping seasons.
The author is COO, TVS ILP
