Relocation of a Warehouse for a Cosmetic Company: A Case Study

Research by: Albert Wee Kwan Tan, Siti Wahab, & Balan Sundarakani

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Moving a warehouse is hard and takes a lot of time. It needs careful planning, figuring out costs, and handling possible problems (Nagahan and Akın, 2018). So, doing the project well is really important to avoid stress, spending too much money, and taking longer than planned. Businesses need to be good at managing projects to make their supply chain better. They can use different methods like the Project Management Institute (PMI) way or just using their own instincts to improve how they manage projects (Kuster et al., 2023). Planning is super important when moving a warehouse. Stuff like how much trucks, workers, and equipment will cost needs to be thought about really carefully (Zapata et al., 2020). Knowing how it might affect a company’s culture and what the stakeholders expect is also really important for managing risks (Singh, 2022).

On the other hand, being resilient means dealing with problems, surprises, changes, and adjusting to them. To manage risks by being resilient, you need to try and reduce problems, prepare for them, and react well when they happen. Managing the risks in the supply chain depends on the situation and focuses on the really important and possible risks (Gurtu & Johny, 2021).

So, being good at managing projects is important, and focusing on being resilient can help manage risks better in supply chain processes (Ageron et al., 2020). This study will focus on summarizing how Company X can use a resilient approach to move its warehouse successfully. The main reason for this study is that if a warehouse move goes wrong, it costs a lot (Nagahan and Akın, 2018). Company X tried twice before to move its warehouse and failed, losing a lot of money because services were interrupted. This happened because Company X hadn’t moved its warehouse in more than 20 years, and none of its supply chain staff had any experience with moving warehouses. Moving a warehouse always changes how things work and introduces risks (Kotonen, 2017). So, this study wants to suggest a new way to identify risks and make plans to deal with them (González-Hernández, 2019).

Company X wanted to move its warehouse and hire another company to manage its storage as part of a bigger plan to use its things better and make its workers more effective. This let Company X focus more on its main job, which is selling products through its network of salespeople.

To deal with these risks and make sure the move goes well, having a strong plan for moving the warehouse is really important. There could be lost sales and problems with service if it’s not planned well (Petersen and Aase, 2016). The project had to deal with a short time to finish, telling the warehouse workers they might lose their jobs, and keeping the service level good. They looked at how Company X already works to see what might go wrong. They thought about all the things that could cause problems and made plans to fix them if they happened.

They thought about different ways to move the warehouse and chose to do it bit by bit in different places because it was safer. The move’s success depended on how well things worked at the new warehouse (Petersen and Aase, 2016). They used certain measures to see how things were going after the move. At first, there were some problems with how quickly workers could get orders, how well things were packed, and if deliveries were on time and complete. But they quickly fixed these problems, and things got better after the third day.

To cite this article:  Tan, A., Wahab, S. N., & Sundarakani, B. (2023). Relocation of a warehouse for a cosmetic company: A case study. Supply Chain Research, 1(1). https://ojs.as-pub.com/index.php/SCR/article/view/113

To access this article: https://ojs.as-pub.com/index.php/SCR/article/view/113

About the Journal

Supply Chain Research (SCR) is an open-access journal. SCR refers to the study of raw material, parts, equipment, products, services, and capital flows in the industrial chain. It also includes the digitalization of supply chain, and the main scene is the digitalization of information flow, capital flow and logistics activities in the supply chain. Manuscripts related to the research and application of supply chain are very welcomed.

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