Archive for Food & Beverage Industry
In an article last Thursday, The Wall Street Journal announced that the Coca-Cola Company was nearing a deal to buy the bulk of its largest bottler, Coca-Cola Enterprises. This was interesting news to me because the acquisition, like PepsiCo’s deals to buy its two biggest bottlers, The Pepsi Bottling Group and PepsiAmericas, was driven in large part by the need for distribution flexibility.
A little refresher course on… Continue reading
In case you missed it, Kraft Foods issued a press release a couple of weeks ago highlighting how it “eliminated more than 50 million truck miles since 2005 through [a] focus on transportation sustainability efforts.” In North America, for example, the company “saved more than a million miles (1.6 million km), replaced 10,000 truck shipments and reduced 2,000 tons of CO2 emissions by shipping wheat via waterways to its… Continue reading
We all remember the story of Goldilocks and the 3 Bears, where one bed was too soft, one was too hard, and third was just right. When it comes to warehousing technologies for food distribution, I see the same thing.
In grocery, most store shipments are composed of mixed-SKU pallets. The layout of a grocery distribution center (DC) generally mirrors a store’s layout. So, if fruits and vegetables are… Continue reading
Barcodes Come to the Farm
· CommentsBarcoding has become ubiquitous in supply chains that start at a manufacturing facility and end at a business or retail customer. Voluntary and regulatory initiatives are now extending barcoding further up the supply chain, to farms that grow fresh fruits and vegetables. The purpose of these initiatives is to support the reverse supply chain—i.e., recalls and traceability. But once farmers start using barcodes, they will likely find other productive uses… Continue reading
Move over carbon, water footprinting is the next big thing.
What is a water footprint? According to the Water Footprint Network, it is “an indicator of water use that looks at both direct and indirect water use of a consumer or producer. The water footprint of an individual, community or business is defined as the total volume of freshwater that is used to produce the goods and services… Continue reading
Editor’s Note: This posting is a follow up to the posting Steve Banker wrote last week which contained some inaccurate statements about the GS1 Canada Product Recall service. This posting provides a more accurate and detailed overview of the service.
GS1 Canada Product Recall is a subscription-based service which provides a standards-based communication tool enabling manufacturers to share real-time product recall notifications with retail partners in a direct, secure… Continue reading
Editor’s Note: The posting below contains some inaccurate information about GS1 Global Traceability Standards (see comment posted below by John Keogh, Senior Vice President EPCglobal Canada and Traceability). A follow up posting has been published which provides a more accurate and detailed overview of the GS1 Canada Product Recall service.
GS1, the global organization responsible for RFID, EDI, and bar code standards, has been developing Global Traceability Standards… Continue reading
I recently wrote a posting about Walmart’s Project Impact initiative and how it enables beneficial synergies between merchandizing and the supply chain (see “Walmart’s ‘Win-Play-Show’ Assortment Strategy”). On the merchandizing side, Walmart is ending up with stores that are less cluttered and more customer friendly, and on the supply chain side, these stores are carrying fewer stock keeping units (SKUs).
The remodeled stores (the “Project Impact” stores) have… Continue reading
