Warehouse Specialists (WSI), an Appleton logistics, distribution and storage company, released a new survey featuring insights from 306 supply chain, operations and logistics businesses, and the consensus is U.S. manufacturer warehouse networks are falling behind, with outdated infrastructure and previous capital investments constraining manufacturers.
The companies surveyed include those in the chemicals, metals, food and beverages, building materials, electronics and other sectors.
One major takeaway from the survey found three-quarters of leaders feel their warehouse network evolved without a strategy in mind, and the current model of warehouse networks was built for an environment that does not exist anymore.
“Companies have responded to a chaotic supply chain in different ways. Some have focused on cost-cutting. But many have learned that a network optimized purely for cost is also optimized to fail under pressure,” Paul Simmons, president of WSI, said in a statement. “The manufacturers moving forward are the ones deliberately redesigning, not just optimizing what they already have.”
