We’re all familiar with the scene: broken wood block pallets piled against a warehouse wall. Wood pallets like these have served their useful lifespan of around 15 to 20 trips across the supply chain and are often bound for the local landfill—or perhaps a good bonfire. On average, once every three to four trips through…
If your facility invested in an automatic pallet wrapper, then you’re likely already experiencing total cost of business (TCOB) reductions. Consider the efficiency gains in sheer productivity. Remember when one warehouse worker would wrap maybe thirty pallets over the course of an entire workday? Entry model turntable wrappers can wrap as many in one hour,…
Temperature excursion, or the deviation from safe handling and transport practices, is a major concern for pharmaceutical manufacturers. Understanding the most common reasons for temperature excursion arms supply chain managers with the knowledge needed to implement processes and tools that limit the risk of improper handling and prevent cold chain shipping losses in pharmaceuticals. Factors…
Product losses during transit are so common and seemingly inevitable that retail managers generally assume that some products will be damaged during transportation. Part of management training for most grocery and consumer goods retailers involves learning how to properly record, sort, and store products that arrived damaged so the retailer can get replacements or credit…
If you’ve worked in the supply chain for any length of time, you’ve seen how product overhang on the edges of pallets can result in products and packaging being crushed or damaged. When the goal is to get as many products on a pallet as possible, it’s easy to create loads that aren’t an optimal…
Recently, the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) has expanded the responsibility of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for ensuring food safety to encompass all parts of the food supply chain, including transportation. Along with this legislation has come a raft of new FDA requirements, many of which are still being ironed out. The FSMA…