Overview
of warehousing in India - Traditionally, warehouses in
India is broadly classified into public-private, bonded, government and
co-operative warehouses. Also, warehousing is looked upon as an asset heavy
model which gave importance to creation of the warehousing space alone without
any emphasis to efficient handling, scientific warehousing processes
and management of the same. Lately, we are seeing that there is a shift in the
focus with increasing importance is being attributed to systems and processes
which are making agri logistics independent of infrastructure and agnostic to
geographic location with an asset light model.
Despite of a strong dependence on agriculture
sector, India has insufficient and inefficient warehousing structures &
practices leading to heavy losses in perishable commodities. India annually
looses 10% of grain being produced (in dry goods alone) which in value terms, amounts
to ~Rs 80,000 Cr.
The losses in commodities are mainly attributed to
infrastructure however, lack of knowledge of managing & maintaining
premises with inefficient scientific processes are the key culprits behind the
losses. The emphasis is falsely placed on creation of infrastructure rather
adopting innovative methods of scientific storage for managing warehouses.
In fact, FICCI in its study has evidenced that using
scientific process in any infrastructure, the wastage of food grains in storage
period can be reduced from the present 10% to 0.5%.
Historically, Global warehousing service provider
have considered warehousing activity as an unavoidable cost and the
objective has always been to reduce this cost as much as possible. Such an
attitude has resulted in huge under-investment in the sector. However,
increasing competition and introduction of global best practices by certain
companies are compelling warehousing companies to rethink on the importance of
warehousing processes and the resultant benefits of managing an efficient
supply chain. Supply chain management is all about flow, be it the flow of
goods from the producer to the consumer or flow of information from the
consumer to the producer.
Warehouses play a critical role in
this process and were conventionally set up as inventory buffer points along with
the supply chain so that any irregularities within this chain could be ironed
out. However, the need to reduce the service response time and contain
inventory cost has necessitated the progression of warehouses from storage
points to distribution centers.
