The pro’s and con’s of a Distribution Facility
A distribution facility is a strategic logistic center placed between one or more manufacturers and their customers; retailers and/or consumers. A distribution facility is also called a Distribution Center or DC or even an International Distribution Center. Its primaray role is to receive, store and ship products from this strategic place. Strategic can be in the center of a province, country or even continent, but also in the nearing of a port or highways. It al depends on the Supply Chain of certain products. If you sell your products locally equally spreaded in a province than it makes sense to have the distribution facility in the middle of that province. But if you sell through the whole of Europe and your products are being imported from outside Europe than a location near the port of Rotterdam and/or highways make more sense.
What happens in a Distribution Facility?
Depending on the Supply Chain of products the flow in a Distribution Facility may vary but this is what mostly happens;
- Goods receipt; Suppliers deliver the goods at the inbound section, goods are unloaded and checked on quality and quantity and processed into a Warehouse Management System (WMS).
- Storage: Goods are placed into storage locations, pallets in palletracks, cartons in shelves.
- Orderpicking: Clients place their orders in the WMS and orderpickers collect the products for these orders from the locations given by the WMS. Barcode scanning is a big help in avoiding mispicks.
- Packaging: After orderpicking products are double checked at the packing station and packed in protective packaging specified by the needs of the client, and supplied with proper paperwork. Such as packing list, shipping label, etc.
- Distribution; Parcels and pallets ready to ship are going to the outbound section and seperated for collection by different carriers via 12 loadingdocks.
Outbound section of Kolibri Logistiek
In a distribution facility are a lot of documents; CMR’s, delivery notes, packing slips and commercial invoices. All of these have to be checked to make sure that they have the corresponding information of the shipment that arrives or leaves at the distribution facility.
What are the pro’s and con’s?
Having your stock on one central location, especially abroad, saves transportation time. If you work with an International Distribution Center you may face cost reductions as they most likely can optimize routes and consolidate your shipments with other shipments to the same country of even final destination. As most likely you speed up your order processing time and delivery times this will result in an improved customer satisfaction and so loyalty.
A Distribution Facility is an important part of your supply chain. You need to have exactly clear what you want to expect from each other. Operational disfunction will have an significant impact on your customers service and sales department.
Kolibri Logistiek is at play in the field of logistics. And we play at Champions League level! We cover your supply chain from collecting your products at location of production up to the last mile to your customers. Request a quote!