The importance of warehouse optimization across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries is expected to increase in the coming years due to the region’s economic diversification initiatives and the vision to establish global distribution hubs in the area. Warehouses have come a long way from just being a place to store goods to playing a central role in any firm’s value chain. They have continuously evolved in the past decade, especially with the rise of e-commerce pressuring warehouses into becoming an order fulfillment center, executing all activities from start to end.
Ensuring warehouse optimization and efficiency has become one of the key focuses in today’s business environment and firms need to be aware of the key challenges faced when operating a warehouse. Be it, having inefficient space utilization or lack of inventory awareness or redundant processes, improvement measures have to be taken to ensure smooth and proficient operations. Eight key optimization elements have been identified for any warehouse; new or existing. The main purpose of this paper is to shed some light on these eight elements.
