Nature's Best Archives

I went to Home Depot earlier this week to return a purchase, and the customer in front of me wanted to exchange a defective power tool with the same model, but he couldn’t find any on the shelf even though the store’s inventory system said 5 units were in stock.

For all the talk about Big Data, omni-channel fulfillment, and other sexy technology, at the end of the day, bad data (and in many cases, store-level execution) remains the Achilles heel of supply chain management.

Here’s the news that caught my attention from the past two weeks:

JDA Software announced the latest release of its supply chain planning suite, which is comprised of more than 20 applications. New innovations include inline analytics, process-driven workflows, packaged event-response levers, consolidated demand signals and in-memory technologies. Here’s some additional details about inline analytics:

JDA’s latest supply chain planning suite introduces inline analytics, the next generation of analytics that go beyond visibility to offer diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive analytics that provide the “why”, “what if” and “what’s optimal” insights necessary to take action. With analytics embedded within the processing platform, planners can respond to changes and resolve disruptions immediately. This approach allows organizations to reduce supply chain risk and potential customer dissatisfaction, versus traditional analytics that require postmortem analysis to determine root cause.

Embedding analytics within the processing platform is certainly the ideal way to enable users to make smarter decisions faster. However, not all insights and intelligence reside in a database. The missing link, in my opinion, is the ability for users to tap into the insights, advice, and experience of their peers to aid in the decision-making process. In other words, the next frontier is to integrate social networking capabilities within the user interfaces of supply chain management applications (for related commentary, see “A Pulse on Social Networking for Supply Chain Management”).

Meanwhile, Manhattan Associates announced the 2013 release of its Inventory Optimization solution, “which provides customized, automated inventory optimization strategies designed to address a customer’s specific business issues and objectives.” According to the press release, Nature’s Best decreased labor costs by 66 percent and increased inventory accuracy by 14 percent after implementing the solution. Here’s a quote from Russell Parker, senior vice president of marketing, brand management, and inbound logistics at Nature’s Best:

“The software does all the heavy lifting. It does the thinking. It does the analysis. It updates itself. It reviews and discards outlying data. It recommends changes for everything from forecasts to order frequency.”

Going back to my Home Depot experience, too bad the software can’t go into the backroom of a retail store and restock an empty shelf. But maybe a robot can in the future.

On the 3PL front, Ryder announced that it is introducing new transportation and logistics solutions for the oil and gas industry, including customized Dedicated Fleets, Transportation Management, and fleet Leasing and Rental services. This is another example of how 3PLs can differentiate themselves in the market by integrating their services into industry-specific solutions — especially for industries that are growing and generally underserved by other providers. According to the press release, Ryder already serves clients in the oil and gas industry. “For example, the company manages all port deliveries to support 18 offshore rigs in the Gulf of Mexico for a major oil company, with 61 dedicated drivers and a network of transportation partners. Its Control Tower solution for an equipment and supplies provider includes on-site staff in Houston, Oklahoma and Louisiana executing more than 75,000 truckloads per year.”

Innovation in logistics also occurs outside the realm of bits and bytes, as Con-way Manufacturing’s announcement this week demonstrates. At the Great American Trucking Show in Dallas, the company unveiled the Kevin Rutherford Signature Series Trailer that features “advanced options not found on standard models available to owner operators, including the SmartTruck UT6Plus UnderTray System to reduce aerodynamic drag and improve fuel economy.” Here are some additional details from the press release:

[The trailer also includes] a Meritor™ suspension with disc brakes and MicroBlue® bearings. The trailer is also fitted with a Fusion Floor™ by HAVCO™ and Michelin® X One® XTA® single-wide tires. Together, these features reduce the weight of a standard trailer by 400 pounds, contributing to impressive fuel efficiency numbers and significantly exceeding the EPA’s requirements for SmartWay certification.

Is it me or did summer go by too fast this year? Time to enjoy the remaining days of sun and warmth. Have a happy weekend!

Song of the Week: “Pompeii” by Bastille

Note: HighJump Software, JDA Software, Manhattan Associates, and Ryder are Logistics Viewpoints sponsors.

I’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 at a central distribution center. Each body has front and rear overhead doors, so both bodies can be loaded through one loading dock door. The semi-trailer with the two loaded bodies is then long hauled to a regional location, where the driver demounts the bodies using Demountable’s hydraulic chassis lift system (i.e., the bodies are lifted off the chassis, metal legs extend down to the ground to support the bodies, and the power unit pulls away). Two straight trucks (non-CDL in most cases) then mount each loaded body using the hydraulic chassis lift system to make the local deliveries.

"Warehouse on Wheels" System (Source: Demountable Concepts)

In short, “Warehouse on Wheels” is a truck-based alternative to hub-and-spoke distribution and cross docking. This technology/concept is not new (Demountable has been in business since 1989), but it’s new to me. The system is most commonly used for home delivery of furniture, direct store delivery of food and beverage products, and site deliveries of home construction materials to contractors.

Of course, trailers have long served as mini-warehouses. But if you are going to store inventory in trailers in your yard, you’d better have high fences and a security system in place. ViewPoint CRM offers products and services for “intelligent surveillance” or “remote guarding.” The basic idea is that traditional camera security is either too expensive or ineffective. Camera systems that are monitored continuously by humans can be costly, and the person doing the monitoring can become bored or experience sensory overload, and as a result miss key events. If you don’t monitor the cameras in real time, then all you can do is potentially identify a thief after a robbery has occurred.

But if you combine digital cameras with advanced software to analyze the captured images, loudspeakers, digital storage, and fast data networks, then you can monitor sites more cost effectively and successfully from a centralized remote location. The intelligent software combines motion detection and surveillance analytics to highlight events that need attention from the monitoring agents. For example, if a monitoring agent at Viewpoint’s command center sees a person engaging in potentially questionable behavior, he can announce himself to the person via the installed loudspeakers and let the person know that their action is not permitted. Viewpoint’s agents are trained to use vocabulary designed to diffuse, not escalate, problematic situations. Their agents can also open yard gates remotely for late-night truck arrivals.

The third product was brought to my attention by enVista’s management team during a recent briefing at our office. enVista participated in a very successful project with Nature’s Best that involved both lean consulting and the implementation of a WMS solution from Manhattan Associates. Nature’s Best had gone from four warehouses down to one consolidated warehouse. As part of that transition, Nature’s Best needed to decide what type of material handling to use as this choice would directly affect the rack design. They selected a cherry picker style electric lift from Atlet called the Tempo. Tempo can lift an operator (“selector”) up to 37 and a half inches off the floor to pick products (cases or individual items). Picked items are then placed on pallets pulled behind the Tempo.

You can watch a video case study on YouTube that explains the project and the benefits achieved, but in brief, the Atlet Tempo allows workers to pick fast moving products from higher levels. As a result, more SKU’s can be stored vertically, thus shortening pick paths. With other equipment, the average selector spends 80 percent of his time traveling between pick locations, and achieves about 70 case picks per hour. By using Atlet and shortening pick paths, selectors can pick over 200 items per hour. Nature’s Best claims to have avoided over $1 million in steel (racking) costs, plus achieved additional savings from needing fewer pieces of material handling equipment and fewer workers.

This Week in Logistics News (August 19-23, 2013)

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