The hows of the warehouse

Five working papers on how a warehouse is laid out, written for the people who have to live in the building afterwards: the numbers that decide the layout, the window the work has to fit, the shell you only get once, the systems that run the floor, and the order the whole thing has to be built in.

The papers come out of projects, not out of a product brochure. The summaries below are public and free to read; the full working papers go to whoever signs up, one part a week.

1. Part one of five

   The flooring sat in a warehouse for a year

   Seven numbers decide every layout choice. They are all in your ERP, and almost nobody has ever asked for them.

2. Part two of five

   A day's work in two hours

   Throughput is not a pace. It is work that has to fit a window, and the window closes at the carrier's cut-off.

3. Part three of five

   You cannot raise a roof

   The shell of a building is given once. That choice starts with the power connection, not with the clear height.

4. Part four of five

   The building knows nothing

   Five systems take the decisions, and a ring around them feeds the work in and out. Where the boundaries actually run.

5. Part five of five

   Everything has to land on the same day

   Steel takes months, software weeks, and the data nobody planned for longer than either. Almost nothing really waits.