You don't need to give up anything. Except for unnecessary inventory

Especially for high-volume products with high inventory turnover frequency or for products with constantly high sales quantities (e.g. products that are always sold at a low price), it may make sense to reduce the classic inventory warehouse to a minimum, or to forego it completely. In the early nineties, the idea of "cross-docking" emerged in retail logistics.

In such a merchandise logistics system, the goods are shipped preselected via a trans-shipping platform, the "cross-docking point", directly to the receiver, e.g. a branch store. Whether one speaks of single-stage or multistage cross-docking is dependent on whether the goods are delivered to the receiving branch store "as packaged by the supplier" or if the goods are bundled into logistics units at the cross-docking point and assigned to a specific branch store.

Goals and advantages of cross-docking systems:

• Efficiency increase in the supply of goods
• Reduction in inventory in the entire supply chain
• Increase in sales space through decrease in inventory at the POS
• Increased availability at the POS through shorter delivery times
• Cost advantage for transport through greater utilisation of the trucks
• Lower packaging costs through consolidated transport
• Reduction of ramp contacts at the retail branch stores.