Warehousing in Finnish and Swedish Companies: State of Operating Environment During Period of 2006–2012

Despite all the efforts of Just in Time philosophy, companies are still required to run numerous warehouses to accomplish distribution management objectives, and match supply network to this activity. In this research is being reported state of the warehousing practices in the largest Finnish and Swedish companies relying on longitudinal data gained through five different surveys. Research findings show that together these two countries are still on the cost pressure with respect of transportation. Also companies in these two northern countries are still using mostly semi-trailers on their distribution transportation. However, some evidence is on place that containers are taking higher role. Interestingly, most of the warehouses of these two countries report to be located in the countries of the Baltic Sea Region, finding which is rather striking as we have given so much effort on economical integration of this region in the recent decades. Finnish companies seem to hold much larger interest on Central and Eastern European Countries warehousing. Size of warehouses is likely to increase a little bit, and units located in other continents are much smaller.