Barycenter technique to locate Warehouse

To locate a warehouse, the barycentre technique -although not perfect- is commonly used to get a first idea of the possible warehouse location.

• See our Free Warehouse locating tool using barycentre method.

 Very mathematical, this technique is quite simple when you have access to a geocoding software

We need to calculate the weighted average of latitude and longitude of each supplier/customer

The process is the following:

1. Get all addresses of suppliers and customers

2. Geocode all suppliers and customers addresses

• Find latitude and longitude from an address using this free geocoding tool .

1. Assign volumes to each flow (m3, palets, trucks…)

2. Assign coefficient to each flow to give more or less importance to particular flows (expensive transport costs, quality matters, lead-time reduction to customers…)

For 2 suppliers and 1 customer:

Barycenter Latitude = ∑Coef_i*Vol_i*Lat_i / ∑Coef_i*Vol_i

Barycenter Longitude = ∑Coef_i*Vol_i*Long_i / ∑Coef_i*Vol_i

• See our Free Warehouse locating tool using barycentre method.