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Finding Cost-Effective Pallet Management Strategies
If you’ve spent any amount of time around a grocery store or other packaged goods retailer, you know that abandoned pallets are a common sight. Orphaned pallets can often be found propped against the back walls of retail stores where drivers abandoned them after delivery. To dispose of the pallets, the retailer will generally end…
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How to Sanitize Plastic Pallets: Keeping Your Supply Chain Hygienic
Across this great land, piled behind millions of grocery and department stores, are millions of reusable wood block pallets. At many of those stores, teenagers working their first jobs have been ordered to add another pallet to the stack out back, and are thinking, “Ew, I have to touch that?” Wood pallets easily collect grime…
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Dealing with and Preventing Rejected Loads
Having worked in the supply chain, I can vouch for the fact that rejected loads are one of the things that truckers hate most. After a journey across the state or even the country, it’s a blow to arrive at your destination only to find that the receiver won’t accept a portion or the entirety…
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What Is Palletizing?
ARTICLE UPDATED ON MAY 22, 2023 What Is Palletizing? Pallets are a crucial element of the supply chain. Inherently simple in structure, pallets are used to store, protect, and transport materials. Palletization is a term used to describe the process of placing materials and packages onto pallets. Though it may sound simple, palletizing for high-volume…
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The Advantages and Disadvantages of an ASRS
Heavy equipment operators are a famously hardheaded lot, given to trusting their skills with the forklift over anything else. I know at least a couple warehouse supervisors and logistics coordinators who have heard an almighty crash and emerged from their offices to find products all over the warehouse floor and a sheepish forklift operator trying…
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The Warehouse of the Future: Planning for Intelligent Transformation
Twenty years ago, a warehouse worker would wake up, fill a thermos with coffee, and hop into his car to drive to work. He might run into traffic on the way there and flip through radio stations looking for a good song. When he arrived at the warehouse, he would get the day’s paperwork from…
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Warehouse Racking Safety Guidelines: Satisfying OSHA
ARTICLE UPDATED ON JUNE 21, 2023 Warehouse Racking Safety Guidelines: Satisfying OSHA The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has an important job — keeping workplaces and workers safe. However, its rules are often nuanced, complex, and hard to follow, making it easy for employers to accidentally violate an obscure rule. Violations usually carry steep…
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Following Lean Warehousing Principles for Improved Efficiency
ARTICLE UPDATED ON JUNE 22, 2023 Following Lean Warehousing Principles for Improved Efficiency A top goal for warehouse managers is to run an effective operation in which productivity is high and goods flow efficiently throughout the supply chain. However, as markets continue to shift, demand skyrockets, and the supply chain evolves, it can be difficult…