-
Reverse Logistics in the Food Industry: How to Make Reuse Easy
Discussions of logistics in the food industry are overwhelmingly concerned with the forward supply chain, that is, getting products from farms or factories to retailers where they can be sold. But these supply chain operations are only half of the logistics system. Once food products arrive at markets, something has to happen to the shipping…
-
Why You Need a Pallet Management Company
Logistics professionals of all types have a lot on their minds. Deadlines for shipping products out, delays in the arrival of components, and the complex logistics of product storage all compete for attention. It’s no wonder that pallets aren’t given much thought, even though they are the basic load unit around which all things in…
-
Create a Circular Business Model by Focusing on Your Supply Chain
It’s estimated that there are more than 7.5 billion people alive in the world today. A person born in 1960 has seen the global population more than double in the time they’ve been alive. The world population is expected to peak at around 9 billion in 2070, and it will be a serious challenge to…
-
How Much Does a Plastic Pallet Cost?
It’s not just your eyes playing tricks on you or your imagination running wild: you really seeing more plastic pallets stacked on the floors of shopping warehouses like Costco, a shift that seems to have happened overnight as the cost of and competition for lumber has never been fiercer. In fact, in an email to…
-
Kaizen Ideas for the Warehouse That Will Improve Productivity
ARTICLE UPDATED ON JANUARY 31, 2024 The journey of Kaizen business strategies has been remarkable since Toyota pioneered them in Japan’s post-war reconstruction in the late 1940s. It was Toyota’s integration of Kaizen into its foundational “Toyota Way” principles that many believe set the gold standard for lean manufacturing. Kaizen approaches not only center on waste reduction…
-
Pallet Industry Trends and What They Mean for Your Supply Chain
There is little doubt that our world is changing. Technology has made a lifestyle that would have been unimaginable a decade ago an everyday reality. Films and communications are available wherever we happen to find ourselves, and the furnishings, food, and devices that we fill our homes with are ordered online and delivered with just…
-
5 Supply Chain Improvement Opportunities That Can Lower Costs
Logistics is often the most expensive part of running a business. That broad term covers the processing, storage, and transportation of not only your products but also the components or ingredients used to make them. If any one of those elements isn’t perfectly coordinated with the others, your Total Cost of Business (TCOB) can needlessly…
-
Pallet Requirements for Export: What to Know
ARTICLE UPDATED ON AUGUST 11, 2023 Discovering a new overseas market for your product can be truly exhilarating. While establishing a niche market domestically contributes to a successful business, venturing into foreign markets elevates your brand to a global scale, even if that market happens to be just across the border in Canada or Mexico.…
-
How to Improve Food Traceability with the Right Shipping Pallet
On the 13th of March in 2018, the first illness in what would become a national outbreak of E. coli linked to romaine lettuce was reported. The outbreak went on for four months before ending in June and 210 people in 36 states were affected. Even though the outbreak was traced back to farms in…
-
How to Build an Ethical Supply Chain (and Why)
Over 80 percent of U.S. consumers say they would buy from a company that advocated for a cause they cared about and 75 percent say they would refuse to purchase from a company that supported a cause they disagreed with. Americans are increasingly making statements with their purchases. They want to be sure that the…
-
Why Choose a Pooled Pallet Rental Program?
There’s a reason most of the large companies you can think of depend on a pallet rental program for the shipping pallets they need to deliver their goods. Pallets are absolutely critical to the supply chain and have been for nearly a century, yet despite this, few companies have mastered the art of pallet management.…
-
Shipping Pallet Market Analysis and Trends
Analyzing the shipping pallet market is a difficult task, and drawing firm conclusions about future trends is harder still. The pallet market is divided into two separate worlds: that of large pallet pools which offer multi-use pallets on an international scale, and the more fragmented world of single-use stringer pallets. Making things even more complicated,…