ational priorities, warehouse footprints, and even the roles
of long-standing value-chain partnerships.
But what is the market profile of today’s operations?
In what ways are the demands on warehouses changing?
Perhaps more importantly, what are practitioners doing
today and what are their plans to meet future demand and
remain competitive?
To develop a better understanding of the fulfillment environment, ARC Advisory Group and DC VELOCITY teamed
and investment priorities. We
included a time-phase element
to obtain insight into the likely
progression from past to present
to future. Many of our findings
are likely to confirm your current
assumptions, while others may
surprise you.
DC FOOTPRINT EXPANSION
Although CBRE and other real
estate firms publish regular
reports on trends in industrial
real estate, including warehouse
space, data on warehouse types
coupled with fulfillment operation data is hard to find. So we
decided to include a question on
facility types in our study. What
we learned was that on average,
respondents’ facility footprints
are almost half bulk warehousing (facilities with more than
100,000 square feet of space),
while a quarter consists of smaller warehouses, followed by
cross-docking operations and refrigerated facilities.
When asked to look forward five years, respondents
logistics service provider (3PL) reported a planned expan-
sion of bulk and cross-docking facilities to meet the antici-
pated needs of its clients.
