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DSCSA Requirements for Manufacturers and What They Might Mean for You
In February of 2019, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued its first warning letter under the Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA) to McKesson Corporation for failing to identify, quarantine, and investigate suspect pharmaceuticals. Under the DSCSA, pharmaceutical manufacturers and others in the pharma supply chain must have systems in place to track drugs…
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Preventing Foreign Material Contamination in Foods
Recently, the risk of contamination in the food supply chain was underlined when Tyson Foods recalled more than 36,000 pounds of chicken nuggets due to potential rubber contamination. While no one was hurt and only a few people reported finding small pieces of blue rubber in the packages of nuggets, the recall still cost Tyson…
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Omnichannel Supply Chain Solutions: Optimizing for Omnichannel Fulfillment
Omnichannel fulfillment–fulfillment of an order through multiple possible channels–is no longer just a trend in retail, it’s a necessity. Customers expect to be able to order items from anywhere and they want delivery locations to be just as flexible. This presents challenges for companies who want to deliver items quickly but may not have the…
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Wood Pallet Alternatives: Why Wood Isn’t the Best Pallet Material
Wood shipping pallets have long been the standard in most supply chains purely because there was no viable alternative. While other options are now available, wood pallets are still in wide use simply because many companies aren’t familiar with the alternatives and continuing to use wood is the path of least resistance. However, there are…
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Tips on Logistics Management: Keeping Your Supply Chain Running Smoothly
The world dangles in a web of very long threads–these are the various supply chains that keep food in our refrigerators, deliver the refrigerators to the stores in the first place, and keep the power plants that allow the refrigerators to run stocked with fuel. If any thread in this interconnected web comes loose, the…
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3 Warehouse Cost Reduction Ideas That Will Trim Expenses
You’ve probably noticed that supply chains everywhere are undergoing significant changes. Technology is widely available that allows us to automate tasks, coordinate shipments, and reduce labor costs, and many warehouse managers have chosen to implement these technologies in order to streamline their processes. But automation isn’t the only option for reducing costs in the warehouse.…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…