It is acknowledged that logistics in India needs to be more efficient. The draft Logistics policy talks about several initiatives with the end goal of bringing logistics costs in India down to ¬10% from the current estimated 13-14%. Warehousing, being a critical component of logistics, can also become more efficient and competitive, and contribute to improving overall logistics competitiveness of the country.
In this conference, we aim to touch upon 3 critical areas which currently plague the warehousing sector or offer significant opportunities for a quantum improvement:
- Standardization: Lack of standardization in logistics which often result in asset underutilization or additional handling. CII is helping develop standards in warehouse flooring and roofing, racking, palletization, material handling and trucking which will ensure interoperability and minimize exception management, bringing in efficiencies.
- Enablers and Challenges in Development: Ensuring the most critical enablers – land, people and finance are available without hassle in a competitive manner.
- Land availability remains an issue as granting of Industry status by state governments has been patchy, thereby preventing use of Industrial land for warehousing. There is also a lack of integrated planning for warehouses and logistics terminals in industrial zones etc.
- There is a need for skilled manpower at various levels which needs to be planned for
- Although ambient temperature warehousing has been given infrastructure status, the route to low cost infrastructure financing remains unclear and needs to be defined.
- Digitalization and automation opportunities, which offer a completely new paradigm with the advent of Internet of Things