Benchmarking warehouses for FMCG industries by assigning significant weights to various benchmarking parameters using AHP

Abstract

Warehouse has always been an important component of the supply chain . The following work emphasizes on more than hundred and a fifty parameters which should be considered while benchmarking and finalizing a warehouse by an a FMCG company. Basically these parameters should be kept into focus while benchmarking the warehouses so that a perfect warehouse can finally be selected. The research will discuss at length about numerous parameters that have been researched upon, and their significance on the selection criteria. These parameters have been classified under thirteen Categories of macro parameters namely location, property, financial, equipment’s, premises, infrastructural, strength, amenities, safety and security, facilities, legal, environmental and accessibility. These categories include all the parameters that were observed while researching about the FMCG industry with respect to this case study, through various websites ,telephonic interviews with warehouse owners over phone and through discussions with the industrial experts in the FMCG domain. The developed approach determines the significance of each macro parameter by rating them on a scale on 1-9 and evaluating their weightages. These parameters are generally never witnessed in any previous work in this field but are of great importance as they make up an essential portion of the micro level.  The outcome of this case study is  to briefly state the significance of each factor on the warehouse which ultimately impacts the supply chain of any product in question . For the methodology a part analytic hierarchy process (AHP) has been used .The weightages that have been assigned to each parameters have been calculated using the pairwise decision matrix which ultimately was used to calculate the criteria weights