Cross-Docking Might Be the Answer to Your Warehousing Woes

Posted on: 21 August 2020

If your business presently has a warehouse and you ship a variety of goods to customers, you may need to consider whether you are utilizing the best strategy for getting goods to customers. Your current strategies may be outdated.

In some cases, using outdated warehouse practices can cost you. Potential costs that you could reduce or eliminate are the costs to sort and pick items to get them ready to transport to customers. You may also be implementing storage strategies that are resulting in needing additional storage space. 

If you are considering relocation or adding storage in an effort to improve your warehousing solution, cross-docking is a logistics strategy that your business may want to consider. The following points will help you understand more reasons why this beneficial warehousing approach is ideal. 

1. Improved Production

There is a lot of time invested in traditional warehousing that involves handling goods and getting them ready for shipment. In a cross-docking warehouse set-up, there is not as much active involvement in handling goods. The goods are often pre-sorted and several suppliers may be scheduled to arrive during the same time frame to dock and load various goods. This eliminates the need to sort through different shipments.

2. Decreased Labor 

Cross-docking is ideal for several reasons. Your employees may be safer in the warehouse environment because they will not need to use heavy machinery such as forklifts as much. The products you need to ship will arrive at you pre-sorted, which reduces the physical labor that employees will need to perform. These improvements in handling products seamlessly in a more expeditious manner can improve your bottom-line.

3. Improved Storage

Most of the products that your warehouse would normally store and sort through will arrive in lots ready to go to customers. This means that they will likely get loaded upon arrival with the exception of circumstances that may warrant temporarily storing a shipment. Even if this occurs, the delivered items will be pre-sorted, so the temporary in-house storage need will be a minimal inconvenience if any at all. 

4. Quicker Deliveries

Customers likely will appreciate receiving their orders sooner than they would from a traditional warehouse shipping and receiving operation. You can expect to get items to them sooner because you are eliminating some of the traditional warehouse duties that are time-consuming.

You can learn more about your warehousing options by contacting local cross-docking services. 

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