What do you mean by warehousing?

A warehouse is a commercial building for storage of goods. These are used by manufactures, importers, exporters, wholesalers, etc. Usually they are the large buildings located in industrial areas of cities and towns. Warehouses help the businessmen to keep their stocks in safe custody during dull season. In this way, they have created the time utility.
Numerous of functions are performed by warehouses. Such as
(i) Consolidation The warehouse receives and consolidates materials/goods from different production plants and dispatches the same to a particular customer on a single transportation shipment.

(ii) Break the Bulk The warehouse divides the bulk quantity of goods received from the production plants into smaller quantities to be transported according to the requirements of clients to their places of business.

(iii) Stock Piling Goods or raw materials which are not required immediately for sale or manufacturing are stored in warehouse to be made available to business depending on customers demand.
(iv) Value Added Services Provision of value added services such as in transit mixing, packaging and labelling is also a function of modern warehousing. Sometimes goods need to he opened and repackaged and labelled again at the time of inspection by prospective buyers.
Another function of modem warehouses is to grade goods according to quantity and divide goods in smaller lots.
(v) Price Stabilisation Warehousing performs the function of stabilising prices-by adjusting the supply of goods according to demand. Thus, prices are controlled from falling when supply is increasing and demand is slack and from rising in the reverse situation.
(vi) Financing Warehouse owners provide loans to the owners on security of goods and further
supply goods on credit terms to customers.