Bloomington, Ind., selected as best warehouse location
Staff -- Logistics Management, 3/1/2003
If you've only got one warehouse and you want to ship all across the United States, the best place to have it is ... Bloomington, Ind.
That's according to a study conducted by Chicago Consulting. The annual study identifies the best locations for warehousing networks with between one and 10 facilities, based on average lead time to customers. Chicago Consulting's computer model determines the average distance to the population for the entire United States from each location, using a standard of 400 miles per day plus one day to calculate transit times. Bloomington ranked the best for single-warehouse operations, with a lead time of three days to anywhere in the lower 48 states.
"We measure the distance every shipment would take if it were sent to the U.S. population," says Managing Partner Terry Harris. "For example, shipping from Bloomington to Los Angeles is about 1,900 miles. Shipping from Bloomington to Chicago is about 300 miles. Shipping to Indianapolis is 50 miles. We take the average of all those across the entire population, divide that by 400 and add a day, and that's your lead time."
Bloomington returns to the top of the heap after being bumped briefly by Terre Haute. Other top sites based on lead time include Dallas, Macon, Ga., and Palmdale, Calif.
Chicago Consulting offers a free evaluation of any company's existing warehouse network in comparison to its 10 best locations. Analysts will measure the distances in shippers' existing warehouse network and calculate the average lead time to the entire U.S. population from that network, Harris explains. "The time penalty [shippers are] facing compared to what they could have is very interesting," he says. "We can then tell them where the best place to add a warehouse would be, and we could advise what the time impact of closing a location would be."
For more information, contact Chicago Consulting at (312) 346-5080 or visit www.chicago-consulting.com.
The 10 Best places for Warehouse Networks
| Source: Chicago Consulting |
||||||||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | |
| Location | Number of Warehouses in Network | |||||||||
| Alhambra, CA | X | X | X | |||||||
| Oakland, CA | X | X | ||||||||
| Palmdale, CA | X | X | X | X | ||||||
| Pasadena, CA | X | X | X | |||||||
| Denver, CO | X | X | ||||||||
| Lakeland, FL | X | X | X | X | ||||||
| Gainesville, GA | X | X | X | X | ||||||
| Macon, GA | X | X | ||||||||
| Chicago, IL | X | X | X | X | X | X | ||||
| Rockford, IL | X | |||||||||
| Bloomington, IN | X | |||||||||
| Ashland, KY | X | |||||||||
| Meridian, MS | X | |||||||||
| Edison, NJ | X | |||||||||
| Madison, NJ | X | X | X | X | X | |||||
| Newark, NJ | X | |||||||||
| Mansfield, OH | X | |||||||||
| Allentown, PA | X | |||||||||
| McKenzie, TN | X | |||||||||
| Dallas, TX | X | X | X | X | X | |||||
| Palestine, TX | X | |||||||||
| Tacoma, WA | X | X | X | X | X | |||||
| Days of Average Lead Time | 3.00 | 2.22 | 1.94 | 1.79 | 1.66 | 1.59 | 1.54 | 1.50 | 1.47 | 1.43 |
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