Expand an industrial building while keeping up the production rate

Your company's activity may change: an exceptional order, a new market to penetrate, or simply the reorganisation of your supply chain. Whatever the reason, you will probably need more space to keep up your production rate.

As this type of surface area extension solution has a logistical and organisational impact on your activity, you should compare the possible alternatives beforehand, according to your needs and forecasts:

• "Traditional" construction
• Warehouse rental
• Construction of modular buildings

Define your objectives well in order to choose the most suitable solution

Depending on the challenges of extending your industrial buildings, you will not always opt for the same solution. The first step is to set out your project:

• The nature of your needs: building for your activities, storage space for raw materials or finished products, distribution centre, etc.
• The timeframe of your project: is it a short-term or long-term need? is it likely to change over time?
• Logistical constraints: what surface area do you need? do you need it on site? how will this new space be implemented within your flow chain?
• Human constraints: do your teams have to work directly in this space?

In order not to miss any step, you can be supported by a consultant who is an expert in the optimisation of spaces and the development of industrial sites. This preliminary framework should allow you to consider the three extension solutions in the context of operational efficiency and productivity.

The long-term solution: "traditional" construction

he so-called "traditional" construction is a project that depends on the duration. It is a solution that can be suited to the needs of your business, but requires a lot of preparatory work. On average it takes 183 days to build a warehouse.

The advantage of this solution is the geographical proximity. Built directly on your site or in a strategic area, the building reduces or even eliminates transportation between your supply and production areas. This is one of the reasons why Van Robays Frères, a family-owned company specialising in flax fibre cultivation and preparation, built a new plant close to the cultivation sectors that are essential to their production.

However, large projects take an average of 20% longer to complete. This delay could further affect the organisation of your production process. In the case where your new construction is carried out on a site that you already occupy, the building works are an additional disturbance for your employees: inaccessible areas, noise pollution, on site construction equipment, etc.

A final problem also arises in addition to the irreducible timeframes for construction: the lack of flexibility. It is possible that the forecasts for the production or storage space do not correspond to real needs in the long term. It will always be possible to reorganise, convert or rent out your building in the event of a change in production volumes, but this represents an additional workload for your company.

To learn more about the operational aspects of on-site construction, consult our comparative guide:

The most flexible solution: outsourcing

The use of a logistics platform to outsource your company's less strategic activities gives you a lot of flexibility. Effectively, it enables you to react quickly to variations in your company's activity: you adapt your service contract to real needs.

This solution will depend essentially on your choice of service provider. The advantages you will get will however be subject to the laws of the market. It will therefore be necessary to inform yourself well about the time needed to provide the space, the possibilities of variation of available space and the assumption of responsibility for ancillary activities by the service provider (e.g. maintenance, repairs, insurance, transport).

Outsourcing can involve any stages of the supply chain that do not require exclusive management by your company.

However, some business situations require specific storage conditions or qualifications. Make sure that the logistics provider covers these specific points, and anticipate any possible impact:

• Does the service provider have to adapt its manpower and its service, and what additional costs does this entail?
• Is the provider able to handle these specific points close enough to my site? What are the consequences for transport and timeframes?

The agile solution: modular structure

A modular construction gives you the advantages of a fixed industrial building, but with as much flexibility as a logistics platform. This solution is much more suited to temporary variations in operations, such as the response to a tender, or the absorption of a peak in activity.

From a timing point of view, modular buildings can be installed quickly, and enable the premises to be occupied almost immediately. Effectively, if you just want a simple storage space, standardised modular buildings can be deployed within 15 days. Your supply chain will keep its fluidity, and your teams will not be hampered by long construction periods. In addition, the modular nature of this solution makes it possible to add, remove, or reallocate spaces according to your real and immediate need. Evian, for example, needed temporary modular premises to store its finished products. At the end of this period, the buildings were reassigned to store supplies such as labels, corks, boxes, etc.

If your requirements have greater constraints, creating your modular buildings will take longer. Customisation needs more time for study and installation, but this is still shorter than in the case of "traditional" construction:

• The land needs less preparatory work
• The construction works are cleaner as the structures are built in the factory
• The assembly of the building can be done as soon this is delivered

For this type of need, be sure to work with a service provider who is familiar with the issues specific to your sector, and who is a driving force when defining your project.

These three solutions ensure gains in productivity over longer or shorter periods, by applying different operational levers. However, there are other aspects to take into account when expanding your industrial building. In this guide, we have also compared the economic and regulatory aspects of these three solutions.