LOS ANGELES—“Gone are the days of industrial spaces being thought of as a necessary evil. Tenants' space is now thought of as a strategic weapon.” Those thoughts are from Adam Mullen, head of supply chain services at CBRE, who recently chatted with GlobeSt.com on how industrial tenants are using space and changes that are occurring as a result of e-commerce.

According to Mullen, Wall Street has its eye on how companies leverage their supply chain, and most companies nowadays, he says, have at least thought about transforming their supply chain to keep up. “The desire to make it easy for consumers, whether eCommerce or Omni-channel or Industrial Supplies, has made things very complex on the back-end,” he says.

There is a laser focus on supply chain design nowadays, he notes.

“Picking the right locations, doing the right things and with the right capacity is key,” he says, adding that we can expect that focus to continue especially as companies position for the future.

But industrial use has come a long way, he explains, but it is still behind compared to the other tenants of a company's supply chain. Things like inventory decisions, process, automation, communication with consumers all move at the speed of light, he says, but “industrial space could be argued as the most important part of the supply chain—home base—and we have to apply the same thinking in our industry and innovate.”

He stresses the importance in finding ways to increase the speed to market for space and the flexibility of that space adding that clear heights, parking, labor ramp-up/down etc. will remain part of the conversation. “That is a default now.”