Archive for Food & Beverage Industry
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
According to a Reuters news report, Ford plans to “identify 850 suppliers eligible for its future business by the end of this year, down from 1,683 suppliers last year.” Tony Brown, Ford’s group vice president of global purchasing, is quoted as saying, “We’ve accelerated our efforts…to rationalize the supply base in order to get to profitable growth for all. There is simply too much capacity in the system. We… Continue reading
Demand Management vs. Demand Sensing
· CommentsOn April 22nd RedPrairie issued a press release announcing that it was adding “flowcasting” to its product suite. Despite reading the press release carefully, I couldn’t fully grasp what “flowcasting” was. Fortunately, RedPrairie’s management team visited us the next day and we discussed this new solution.
It turns out that “flowcasting” is synonymous with “demand sensing” and “sense and respond”. The industry has not settled yet on… Continue reading
Intriguing Logistics Products
· CommentsI’ve come across three logistics products and services in recent months that intrigued me.
The first product is called the “TruckTrainer Warehouse on Wheels System” by Demountable Concepts. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I recommend that you watch this video on Demountable’s website to fully understand what this product/system is about. Briefly stated, two “detachable trailer bodies” are mounted onto a Demountable Concepts semi-trailer… Continue reading
