What is a warehouse? Why it is needed? What are the types of Warehouse?

What is a Warehouse?

A covered building to store huge quantities of goods with round the clock security arrangements.

Why it is needed?

Warehouse is necessary considering the sudden uncertainties like, during break-out of War at/near/closer to the supplier’s country and during long bad climatic condition.

What are the types of Warehouse?

a) Public Warehouse – Public warehouses are owned by Government or semi-Government bodies belonging to private sector to store goods meant for systematic distribution.

b) Private Warehouses – Private warehouses are owned/leased by corporate retail companies, the wholesalers and the traders make huge purchases of goods in the peak season and store them to meet the demand by way of systematic distribution.

c) Customs Public Bonded Warehouse – A Customs licensed warehouse run by Government and semi-Government bodies run by the private parties. Here, importers store customs assessed dutiable goods.

Image of Public & Private warehouse

d) Centre of distribution – Here the goods are procured from multiple suppliers and are distributed to various vendors.

e) Smart warehouse – With minimum manpower and lesser chance of error, nowadays, smart warehouses are using automated artificial intelligence process.

A smart automated warehouse.

f) Cold-storage warehouses – Sensitive Goods like medicine, fruits/flowers and films need to be stored in a specific temperature.

Cold Storage warehouse.

g) Warehouse for Dangerous/Hazardous Goods (DG) – There is no direct equivalent regulations issued for the storage of DG goods. However, to certain extent, by meticulous planning of building with high-heat absorbent double walled compounds that should surround the DG warehouse facilities. Such warehouses should be installed with firefighting equipment and should pave way for direct approaches for the fire service (tender) personnel to reach the fire-accident spot to quickly put out the fire in order to ensure safe rescue of the men trapped inside the facility. Preferably, these facilities are to be built away from thickly populated cities/towns. Constant supervision and continued vigilance alone shall avert man-made risk.

Considering factors such as your type of industry, location, business scope and transportation facilities, you should choose any above type to suit your requirement.