The SAP Extended Warehouse Management System (SAP EWM) is the most powerful form of controlling automatic and manual warehouse processes based on SAP. leogistics stands for efficiency, stability and flexibility in your SAP EWM system. As specialists in the field of automation and connection of hardware and IoT, we integrate them seamlessly for your efficient, SAP-based warehouse processing.
In many cases, we act as an intermediary in the area of tension between IT and the department and are happy to assume this role. Especially when switching to SAP EWM, it is important to manage the balancing act between process standardization and your requirements.
Based on our in-depth industry know-how, we create transparent, maintenance-friendly end-2-end solutions with our own developments and accompany you as a reliable, strategic partner into the future of warehouse logistics.
During the industrial revolution of the mid 18th century, the function of warehouses evolved and became more specialised. The mass production of goods launched by the industrial revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries fuelled the development of larger and more specialised warehouses, usually located close to transport hubs on canals, at railways and portside. Specialisation of tasks is characteristic of the factory system, which developed in British textile mills and potteries in the mid-late 1700s. Factory processes speeded up work and deskilled labour, bringing new profits to capital investment.
Warehouses also fulfill a range of commercial functions besides simple storage, exemplified by Manchester's cotton warehouses and Australian wool stores: receiving, stockpiling and despatching goods; displaying goods for commercial buyers; packing, checking and labelling orders, and dispatching them.
The utilitarian architecture of warehouses responded fast to emerging technologies. Before and into the nineteenth century, the basic European warehouse was built of load-bearing masonry walls or heavy-framed timber with a suitable external cladding. Inside, heavy timber posts supported timber beams and joists for the upper levels, rarely more than four to five stories high.
19th-century warehouses in Gloucester docks in the United Kingdom, originally used to store imported corn
A gabled roof was conventional, with a gate in the gable facing the street, rail lines or port for a crane to hoist goods into the window-gates on each floor below. Convenient access for road transport was built-in via very large doors on the ground floor. If not in a separate building, office and display spaces were located on the ground or first floor.
Technological innovations of the early 19th century changed the shape of warehouses and the work performed inside them: cast iron columns and later, moulded steel posts; saw-tooth roofs; and steam power. All (except steel) were adopted quickly and were in common use by the middle of the 19th century.
Strong, slender cast iron columns began to replace masonry piers or timber posts to carry levels above the ground floor. As modern steel framing developed in the late 19th century, its strength and constructibility enabled the first skyscrapers. Steel girders replaced timber beams, increasing the span of internal bays in the warehouse.
The saw-tooth roof brought natural light to the top story of the warehouse. It transformed the shape of the warehouse, from the traditional peaked hip or gable to an essentially flat roof form that was often hidden behind a parapet. Warehouse buildings now became strongly horizontal. Inside the top floor, the vertical glazed pane of each saw-tooth enabled natural lighting over displayed goods, improving buyer inspection.
Hoists and cranes driven by steam power expanded the capacity of manual labour to lift and move heavy goods.
20th century[edit]
Aisle with pallets on storage racks in a modern warehouse
Two new power sources, hydraulics, and electricity, re-shaped warehouse design and practice at the end of the 19th century and into the 20th century.
Public hydraulic power networks were constructed in many large industrial cities around the world in the 1870s-80s, exemplified by Manchester. They were highly effective to power cranes and lifts, whose application in warehouses served taller buildings and enabled new labour efficiencies.
Public electricity networks emerged in the 1890s. They were used at first mainly for lighting and soon to electrify lifts, making possible taller, more efficient warehouses. It took several decades for electrical power to be distributed widely throughout cities in the western world.
20th-century technologies made warehousing ever more efficient. Electricity became widely available and transformed lighting, security, lifting, and transport from the 1900s. The internal combustion engine, developed in the late 19th century, was installed in mass-produced vehicles from the 1910s. It not only reshaped transport methods but enabled many applications as a compact, portable power plant, wherever small engines were needed.
Adams & Bazemore Cotton Warehouse in Macon, GA, circa 1877
The forklift truck was invented in the early 20th century and came into wide use after World War II. Forklifts transformed the possibilities of multi-level pallet racking of goods in taller, single-level steel-framed buildings for higher storage density. The forklift, and its load fixed to a uniform pallet, enabled the rise of logistic approaches to storage in the later 20th century.
Always a building of function, in the late 20th century warehouses began to adapt to standardization, mechanization, technological innovation, and changes in supply chain methods. Here in the 21st century, we are currently witnessing the next major development in warehousing– automation.
Warehouse layout[edit]
A good warehouse layout consist of 5 areas:
Loading and unloading area - This is the area where goods are unloaded and loaded into the truck. It could be part of the building or separated from the building.
Reception area - Also known as staging area, this a place where the incoming goods are processed and reviewed, and sorted before proceeding to storage.
Storage area - This is the area of the warehouse where goods sit as it awaits dispatch. This area can be further subdivided into static storage for goods that will take longer before being dispatched and dynamic storage for goods that sell faster.[11]
Picking area - This is the area where goods being dispatched are prepared or modified before being shipped.
Shipping area - Once goods have been prepared, they proceed to the packing or shipping area where they await the actual shipping.
Typology[edit]
India House, Manchester.
Warehouses are generally considered industrial buildings[12] and are usually located in industrial districts or zones (such as the outskirts of a city).[13] LoopNet categorizes warehouses using the "industrial" property type.[14] Craftsman Book Company's 2018 National Building Cost Manual lists "Warehouses" under the "Industrial Structures Section."[15] In the UK, warehouses are classified under the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 as the industrial category B8 Storage and distribution.[16][17]
Types of warehouses include storage warehouses, distribution centers (including fulfillment centers and truck terminals), retail warehouses, cold storage warehouses, and flex space