How much does an effective warehouse racking cost per square meter? First, you have to calculate the cost per square meter of warehousing. This is done by getting the actual size of the warehouse racking storage center and the total value of the land per square meter. Next, estimate the cost per square meter of the racks. Ask your racking company for the figure. You can ask for different quotes depending on the type of racking.
You should factor in your relocation costs. Moving storage facilities can be very time consuming and extremely costly. Consider different factors such as worker dissatisfaction, lost production time, logistic costs of transferring large stocks and labor cost requirements like IT costs when you move servers and different infrastructures.
When you plan for a new warehouse racking system, you also have to consider the overall industry environment. You have to understand the industry life cycle of your business venture and your overall position so that you can choose the right warehouse layout as well as the racking system that fits your business industry. Ask yourself if you are in a relatively stable industry or in a rapid growth industry? When you are engaged in innovation industries or technology industries, it will require you with much flexibility compared to the much stable packing and food industries which also require a high storage capacity because of high volumes streaming in. When you understand the life cycle of your industry, it will help you forecast the space requirements of your storage facility.
Other important considerations when planning your warehouse layout are the amount of stocks that you will be storing and the required volume of your storage pallets. You need to know how many different types of products that you wish to stock. As a general or universal rule, when your storage requirements are more than 3000 pallets, it is normally cost effective when you select a racking solution that accommodates higher volume.
To come up with that perfect warehouse plan, you need to calculate next the different stock keeping units (SKU’s) that you currently stock. Ask yourself if the stock is likely to expand or decrease? Conduct a very detailed analysis of the Product Life Cycle of your stocks. This will provide you with a clear forecasting idea on the estimated demand for every product that you have that require storage. Generally, products fall into 1 out of 4 categories: Introduction, Growth, Maturity and then finally, Decline. When measuring in terms of stock keeping units, 1-20 is generally considered a very low variation of SKU; while above 20 is considered to be higher which translates into a greater pallet accessibility.