MORE THAN A CENTURY AGO, Alfred Nobel had the disturbing experience of finding his own obituary printed in the newspaper. People who work in warehousing can relate.

In 1999, a study by the Warehouse Education and Research Council included a grim prognosis: "Stored product is now seen as an indication of slack in the supply chain." And the study wasn't unique. Supply chain professionals operated by the popular mantra "replace inventory with information" for many years before that, and it was tacitly understood that warehouses were slowly being superseded by more modern practices

The goal to streamline inventory is still intact, but warehousing has not only survived, it has actually picked up steam as a strategic logistics tool. As more manufacturing has migrated to Asia, companies' supply chains have become thousands of miles longer and considerably more dependent on an array of transportation modes.

The private and public sectors are working diligently to make the necessary modifications, but solving landside infrastructure constraints and intermodal bottlenecks takes years, not months. Until these improvements are complete, transportation will be a more unpredictable part of most supply chains, and warehouses will be considered one of the most practical ways companies can restore consistency and equilibrium.

Shipping raw materials and finished products in quantities greater than needed could reduce the overall logistics cost by permitting better utilization of transportation assets. Warehousing is also gaining momentum from a product purchasing perspective. Just last year, logistics analyst Donald Coxe stated that the price of raw materials was rising nine times faster than the price of finished goods. Admittedly, part of this price difference stemmed from China's lower-cost manufacturing reducing the cost of finished goods, but not all of it. If this trend continues, more companies may elect to offset potential price spikes and provide more control over costs by increasing their supply of raw materials or finished goods. Therefore they'll need to increase their warehousing space accordingly.

Warehousing has obvious advantages as part of logistics contingency plans and inbound manufacturing support. Using part of the inventory in warehouses for safety stock can ensure that products or raw materials are there when you need them. And managing the flow of raw materials and components into and within Asian countries is a formidable challenge, especially since the infrastructure and transportation systems in many of these countries still leave much to be desired.

Things are improving, but companies will have to deal with challenges such as a fragmented transportation industry for a long time. When you consider such limitations against the potentially high-cost consequences of a late or missed delivery to a production line, it's easy to see why warehouses are vital parts of many companies' Asian supply chains.

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While IT tools and the information superhighway have come a long way in the past decade, they are still not capable of actually carrying any raw material or product. As long as raw materials and finished goods remain tangible, they must eventually be handled via tangible means. And even in this systems-driven age, most of them must be moved and managed with the help of at least one logistics facility somewhere along the way.

So if you think warehousing is dying, think again