"Warehouse Key Poor Performance Indicators (KPPI), are an unproductive and damaging warehouse cancer that must be controlled, to make local businesses exceedingly effective in meeting customer satisfaction", said Cumar Rodrigo, Director, The Logistics Academy (Pvt) Ltd, a local consultancy and training institute in Logistics and Supply Chain Management.

Describing Warehouse KPPI as a new concept in logistics consultancy and professional services, Rodrigo said that though in other professionally advanced management disciplines Key Performance Indicators and "best practices" are essentially practised, it is rather too early , unwise and foolhardy to apply these productivity –oriented management concepts in their totality to the warehouse environment in Sri Lanka.

Instead, Rodrigo calls for a more selective approach for the warehouse operations sector as ‘Sri Lanka is still undergoing a painstaking upgrading and professionalization process owing to the scant importance given to warehousing generally in Sri Lankan industry and commerce’ and feels that the local warehousing sector is far behind in best practices when compared to other line functions.

"It is for these reasons that local commercial concerns need ‘warehouse audits’, a process involving the application of KPPIs and then KPIs, through which means we could establish evaluation and control processes and thereby attain productivity levels demanded today by progressive companies", Rodrigo explained.It is with a view to identifying KPPIs and then establishing ‘best practices’ in warehousing that The Logistics Academy (Pvt) Ltd. offers the concept of ‘cyclical consultancy’ to its clientele. Under this concept, on mutually agreed terms, the organization carries out audits to find solutions to the following problems in local warehousing:

* Are you investing too much in stocks?

* Are your stocks losing value with time?

* Is your ordering / buying wrong?

* Are you buying and storing too much?

* Do you wish to have stocks near-just-in-time?

* Is your stores/warehouse badly managed?

* Are you optimizing available storage facilities?