The Reusable Packaging Forum, held in April in Chicago and organized by the Reusable Packaging Assn., offered thought-provoking presentations to 3PLs, reusable packaging suppliers, and end users of reusables on some of the most pressing topics in the industry. Among them, the keynote presentation discussed how the rise of smartphones, e-commerce, and omni-channel marketing is transforming the supply chain, providing 3PLs with more customer data than ever before; end users and providers of reusable packaging provided advice on making the case for reusable packaging; and technology suppliers impressed upon the audience the importance of having systems in place to track reusable assets throughout the supply chain.
Following are some of the insights shared at the event:
“The growing convergence of the Internet of People with the Internet of Things is resulting in an ‘Internet of Everything (IoE)’ that is not only transforming the consumer world; but it is resulting in a fundamental transformation of the commercial world and supply chain in particular.” –Richard Sherman, President and CEO of Gold & Domas Research
“The supply ‘chain’ is transforming into a Smart Supply ‘Network’ 3.0. Web 3.0 (IoT) provides real time data, analytics, and collaboration to support new models for connected commerce. With this, we will have visibility of the movement of everything through the entire supply chain.” –Sherman
“When considering the use of reusable packaging, you need to compare current conditions to ideal conditions to help identify savings/costs. Considerations include: cost savings, efficiency, space, ergonomics, freight, safety, and loop [The loop is the number of containers you need to keep the whole supply chain moving.].” –Cindy Doman, Packaging Engineer, Herman Miller (see article on Herman Miller's use of reusable packaging)
“The average number of products carried by a typical supermarket has more than tripled since 1980. More SKUs means mixed cases and smaller shipments. How do you do that? Reusable packaging.” –Joe Kelly, General Manager, USA & Western Overseas, K. Hartwall
“As the supply chain increases in rapidity, you need to know where your asset is. Deposits are critical to ensure there is ownership of the asset no matter where it is in the system.” –Kelly
“Retailers are looking at a continuous flow of delivery—no back-of-the-store inventory. They can’t do that without pallets.” –Kelly
“The industry costs to cover the many problems of reusable racks and totes is well above $750 million annually in North America alone. ‘Lost’ returnable containers will continue to cause supply chain downtime and loss of productivity unless an adequate system can be introduced to gain visibility of and control their whereabouts better.” –Kevin Marrie, The Kennedy Group
With an individual system, each asset is uniquely identified. There are four common ways to identify individual assets: barcode scanning, passive RFID tags, active RFID tags, and GPS.” –Keith Schall, Director, IT Global Containers, for CHEP
