How efficient is an XXL warehouse ? (Warehouse Totaal)

The Netherlands is seeing explosive growth in the number of XXL warehouses, but is bigger always better? The answer: not from an internal logistics perspective. Extra steps are necessary to ensure an efficient warehouse set-up and keep costs under control.

‘XXL’ refers to warehouses bigger than 40,000 square meters. That number seems to have been chosen for a reason. The productivity of warehouse operatives declines in direct correlation with the size of the warehouse, according to Rob Wijnen, who as an analyst at consultancy firm Groenewout spends much of his time investigating warehouse productivity. “The bigger the warehouse is, the greater the picking distances are, and that impacts on the productivity.”

This article was published in the September 2019 edition of the Dutch trade journal Warehouse Totaal.