-
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…
-
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. …
-
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…
-
Warehouse Space Optimization Techniques: Saving Space in the Warehouse
One of the things that stands out in warehouse work is that when a warehouse nears maximum capacity, every operation takes a lot longer. Often, it becomes necessary to shift existing inventory around before freshly arrived inventory can be stowed into storage slots. This effectively causes each operation to take twice as much time, or…
-
3 Ways to Improve Supply Chain Efficiency
Supply chain efficiency plays a crucial role in determining a company’s total cost of business (TCOB) as well as customer satisfaction. For industries handling perishable products such as the grocery and pharmaceutical industries, order-to-delivery turnaround times are especially important to ensure that the products are safe for consumption by the end customer. An efficient supply…
-
Reducing Empty Miles: How the Right Pallet Can Make Shipping More Efficient
Empty miles, a term that describes cargo vehicles traveling without a load of products that can be sold for a profit, have bedeviled merchants since the earliest days of trade. In the Age of Discovery, merchants would occasionally arrange stopovers at different continents to pick up cargos that could be sold for a profit. In…
-
3 Ways to Reduce Food Loss in the Supply Chain
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) estimates that around 14 percent of food is lost worldwide in production or the supply chain before even reaching retailers. Recently, more attention is being paid to this issue. In 2018, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) together announced…
-
Cost Management in the Supply Chain: Techniques for Lowering Overall Costs
A food item or consumer packaged good makes quite an interesting journey through the supply chain—moving from producers to manufacturing facilities to warehouses before ultimately reaching the supermarket. Though inflation and taxes play a major role in determining the prices of these products, the supply chain impacts final prices, too. For example, social distancing and…