SupplyChainNetwork.com

So you’ve determined the best geographic location for your logistics warehouse or distribution center and now all you have to do is find any available site and get building.
Well that sounds simple, but truly selecting the right site for your operations is a bit more complex than that, and picking the wrong site can lead to a very expensive and problematic outcome.

There are many factors which must be taken into account to ensure that you select the right site and don’t run into any unexpected requirements which result in significant cost overruns which can hamper your operational costs for years to come.

 

These site factors you must consider include;

- Lot size

- Adjacent lands

- Site grading

- Environmental assessment

- Taxes

- Proximity to services

- Proximity to highway

We will now briefly review each of these to assist you in working with your real estate guru and professional engineers to make the best decision for siting your logistics operation.

Determining the correct lot size for your operation is directly relational to the types and size of inventory you need to store at this location.

Once you’ve determined your inventory deployment and made a building size calculation based on this inventory, the building height and the type of storage medium(s) you plan to utilize the lot size can be determined.

You can simply add 20 to 30 percent beyond the building footprint, or if you want built in expansion on your lot, you can also include this in your lot size calculation.

However if your firm like many is timid when it comes to real estate and major investments you may want to build to your three to five year needs and then ensure that adjacent lands are available and tie them up with a right of first refusal to ensure you have readily available expansion space.

When you’re deciding on which lot to select in a given area or business park, there are many factors to take into account, the first of which is site grading that we will discuss next.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 5th, 2007 at 1:00 am and is filed under Materials Handling & Distribution. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.