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Supply Chain Cost Reduction Challenges
Operations managers routinely look for opportunities to scale up in order to address supply chain cost reduction challenges. Scaling can allow managers to take advantage of lower rates and increased efficiencies. While this strategy can work well for large companies, small and mid-size companies are often unable to realize the benefits of scale. Instead, small…
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How to Lower Freight Costs
In response to pandemic uncertainty, logistics managers are closely examining how to lower freight costs by increasing efficiency, reducing waste, minimizing risks, and spending smarter. While the pandemic’s long-term impact on the shipping industry is difficult to foretell, short-term uncertainty has had a significant impact on freight rates. By September 2020, rates on some trucking…
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How Strong Are Wood Pallets?
Wood—a fundamental component of nearly every early American industry—has been essential to modern shipping and logistics for decades in the form of wood pallets. But just as the homebuilding and ship manufacturing industries adopted stronger materials than wood, the modern shipping industry has likewise evolved. Nowadays, a simple question like “How strong are wood pallets?”…
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The Environmental Impact of Logistics: Making Supply Chains More Sustainable
As supply chains grow more complex, shipments of U.S. goods are expected to accelerate 23.5 percent by 2025. Due to increased freight activities, the environmental impact of logistics will invariably contribute to rising greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. As a result, businesses are seeking ways to reduce their supply chain carbon footprint and create an environmentally-friendly…
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5 Hidden Costs in Your Supply Chain
Cost reduction is always a challenge in a supply chain. Every step in the supply chain—from sourcing and manufacturing, to warehousing, logistics, and transport—incurs additional costs that businesses try to limit. It is estimated that the supply chain and logistics account for more than 10% of a business’s overall costs. The efforts to lower costs…
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4 Ways to Improve Your Supply Chain Transportation Efficiency
In transportation logistics, every mile and every minute matters. Slowdowns and inefficiencies compound. While some supply chain operating costs cannot be significantly reduced, transportation logistics offers opportunities to trim unnecessary time, money, and fuel use. Increasing your supply chain transportation efficiency is simply one of the best ways to lower your total cost of business. …
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How to Build a Low Carbon Supply Chain
Estimates suggest that a business’s supply chain accounts for more than 75 percent of its total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The alarming rate of global warming, coupled with consumer awareness about environmental sustainability, has led companies to build green supply chains that reduce their carbon footprint. For businesses, a reduced carbon footprint can also result…
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Reducing Contamination in the Pharmaceutical Industry: How Simple Changes Can Help
In the pharmaceutical industry, there are two related kinds of damage that can happen to a company: reputational damage and damage to the bottom line. Few things impact both of those as much as contamination. Contamination in the pharmaceutical industry may lead to returned shipments, regulatory oversight, strained relationships with vendors, and increased costs, as…
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RFID Implementation in the Warehouse Increases Accuracy and Throughput
In a warehouse with tens of thousands of square feet of storage, it can be difficult to maintain an accurate picture of inventory and overall operations. Even pallet-level barcodes do not resolve this issue, as a barcode reader must have a direct line of sight to capture a barcode’s data. This means relying on warehouse…
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How to Improve Energy Efficiency in the Supply Chain
ARTICLE UPDATED ON JULY 27, 2023 During his remarkable conquests, Alexander the Great reportedly shared a remark regarding the individuals responsible for ensuring the smooth functioning of his supply chain. He stated, “My logisticians are a humorless lot. They know if my campaign fails, they are the first ones I will slay.” In the present…
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The Benefits of Pallet Racking: Why Your Warehouse Needs a Racking System
ARTICLE UPDATED ON NOVEMBER 28, 2022 The demand for home delivery and the rise of e-commerce operations has led to significant growth within the warehouse industry, with a 2021 study citing that demand for warehouse space in 2021 had grown by 22% year-over-year, greatly exceeding the need in 2019 and 2020. To compete with the…
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RFID in the Pharmaceutical Supply Chain Offers Transparency in a Complex Industry
Though the commercial usage of Radio Frequency Identification or RFID technology was started in the 1990s, its implementation in the pharmaceutical supply chain has been relatively new. Several pharma companies still rely on barcoding as the more widely accepted form of electronic identification. A barcode on a pharmaceutical product package acts as a stock-keeping unit…