Why a second command center quietly inflates OPEX
In a mid-sized logistic center the second command desk often starts as insurance. Coverage across an L-shaped layout, different shift patterns, or simply the habit of having someone always on the far side of the building. The problem is that the insurance keeps charging rent long after the layout has stabilized.
Each extra center carries its own radios, screens, shift hand-overs, and the constant phone traffic that travels between the two desks. Drivers end up answering calls from both places. Work orders get double-booked or missed. Idle travel climbs because no single view owns the full floor. None of those costs appear as a clean line item; they simply sit inside the monthly logistics OPEX and grow with every added forklift or extra shift.
What one 15,000 sqm warehouse actually spent and recovered
A logistic-center warehouse of 15,000 sqm ran exactly this dual-center setup. The team chose the Logistics Management module (AOS) and invested €28,000. The project folded the two command centers into one centralized command center. Measured OPEX saving in the first year reached €65,000.
The number is specific to that site and that module. It is not a generic industry average. It came from removing the parallel structure itself: one set of dispatch decisions, one workload board, one place where every open transport request lived.
How the internal marketplace made the single desk workable
AOS treats internal moves like a shared marketplace. Operators raise a need; available drivers see the open jobs and accept them. The system records who asked, who took the job, where the driver was at the moment of acceptance, the route taken, and the time on task. Once both former command centers fed into the same board, the old phone traffic between desks largely disappeared. Work stopped bouncing between two queues and started flowing through one controlled pull system.
The change does not require new forklifts or extra people. It requires the dispatch logic to sit in one place so the existing fleet can be directed without the previous hand-off friction.
Keeping the lower overhead after the first year
The €28,000 was a one-time project cost. The €65,000 saving was recurring OPEX. After the consolidation the single command center continues to run on the same data-point license model; there is no per-user charge that would reopen the staffing cost the second desk once carried. Visibility across the floor remains available to anyone who needs it, yet the fixed overhead of a second physical command point stays gone.
For any warehouse still carrying two desks the useful next step is simply to map the actual phone and radio traffic between them for two weeks. If that traffic is still high, the consolidation arithmetic is already visible on the floor before any software is installed.