Freight Villages

Abstract

Freight villages reflect a modern way of organizing logistics, transport, and goods distribution activities. Warehouses are a basic element in such building complexes, and their efficient planning and operation is essential for the viability of the system. Warehouse design requires a mixture of analytical skills and creativity. Although effort has been dedicated to defining a global methodological design framework, the most scientific papers on the subject address well-defined, isolated problems. A practitioner may notice, however, that many warehouses offering efficient, cost-effective services are in operation and that several warehouse design manuals exist that tackle aspects of design and operation. Investigating academic and pragmatic points of view, this paper is an attempt to present an overall view of the facility layout and warehouse design problem, and it introduces the analysis and results of the preliminary design phase of a new freight village where issues related to facilities layout, warehouse sizing, and rail connections have been considered.