Pooled warehouse management: An empirical study

Today, pooled warehouse presents a major issue for supply chain actors. Managing such structures establishes a more complex and little known actions system. In this paper, we provide the main specificities of a pooled warehouse examined from the perspectives of both a literature review and an exploratory qualitative study built on seven cases in France. This study is based on semi-structured interviews with 22 companies managing projects in the field of pooled warehouses. From this qualitative analysis, we distinguish the main characteristics of pooled warehouses, such as compatibility and partner maturity, shared Vendor Managed Inventory, and collaborative management. In addition, we identify new key performance indicators, uncertainty sources and risks of pooled warehouses. This work helps define pooled warehouse concept and brings practitioners a better understanding of how it can be managed. Furthermore, it allows researchers to develop new models of optimization considering the pooling context. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.