My Story of a Solution - Pallets & Crates on Rent!!!!!!

Somebody has rightly said “Better late than Never”. Yes, I am a new blogger on board. And though I don’t even have average writing skills, I was introduced to a truly amazing concept which motivated me to write and share my views and the idea with all of you. I am sure like me; many of you have gone thru or may be going thru the experience that I am sharing here.

It all started on a Monday morning. I was working in the engineering department and our “Process Improvement” meetings were scheduled on 1^st Monday of every month. The Cross Functional Team had gathered and first 5 minutes were spent to discuss on what snacks, tea or coffee to be ordered.  I sometimes felt that these 5 mins had 100% involvement from the entire CFT. The next 5 minutes were spent on some of us voluntarily informing everyone on how they had enjoyed their weekends and the new restaurant that had come up in their area.

The discussion finally started coming around the main objective and I started reading the minutes of previous meeting. Each of the initiatives and their status were briefly discussed. And there was this particular point which was being skipped since last 4 meetings. I took a few sips of tea and read the next point “Pallet….Standardization”. The point was not even finished and there was a bang on the conference table. It was so sudden that I almost lost the balance of my hand and dropped a few drops of tea on the beautiful carpet below. I really felt sad for the carpet. I looked in the direction from where the sound had come. The epicentre of this small earthquake was the place where our hefty Quality manager was sitting.

The next 15 minutes were spent on describing the status of our pallets. The Quality Manager talked on the customer complaints he had received due to poor quality of pallets and other packaging goods mainly cartons, crates and custom designed containers. Few of the cartons had buckled damaging our products. Some of the pallets had broken even before they reached the customer and some were bleeding white powder. The Logistics manager was complaining on the different sizes of the pallets used and the associated logistics problems. He also mentioned about the manpower and space required for storing the pallets and other packaging goods. The Production manager complained on the untimely supply of pallets. The products were sometimes placed on the floor due to unavailability of pallets, and one of the cause for damaging products. The Sourcing Manager voiced the problems of unavailability of quality pallet suppliers, the moisture content of the pallet timber and so on. The Finance Manager mentioned on the rising capital invested on the purchase of the pallets and cartons. These pallets and cartons were disposed at the customer end and also had environmental impact. Our international customers even charged us an additional fee for disposing pallets at their end.

I found an old presentation and brought to notice that a project was already conducted last year. The presentation had detail action points:

1. Analysing different sizes of components, their weight and loadability of individual components.
2. Grouping of different components for which same size of the pallets could be used.
3. Study of cartons, increasing the strength of cartons.
4. Preparing the drawings and specs for pallets and so on…….                                                                        

Almost more than a month had been spent last year and there were many ongoing projects, component design, forgings, castings, machining and so on that pallets were last on our priority list. It was a fact that the problems continued and everyone had come to a conclusion that this needs to be taken seriously.

A few days later myself and our logistics manager were invited to a Supply Chain event. It was during this event that we got introduced to this amazing solution – “Equipment Pooling”. We had almost found a solution for all our problems. The solution was with CHEP India and they offered the standardized pallets and crates on rent!!!!!!!!!!!

We later found that CHEP is a global leader in pallet and crate pooling services. Equipment Pooling is the shared use of standardised equipment by multiple customers. It involves movement of packaging equipment across the supply chain.  Equipment Pooling incorporates many different processes involved in owning and managing returnable pallets & crates across the supply chain in one simple package.

BENEFITS OF POOLING

1. Reusable equipment saves costs and reduces waste vs. using cardboard,

2. Leasing equipment offers substantial financing benefits, reducing capital investment,

3. Standardising equipment between manufactures, suppliers and customers drives efficiency in the overall supply chain,

4. Palletising goods substantially reduces product damage and loss.

We decided to carry out trials with CHEP India. The CHEP team spent time with our logistics team to study our existing packaging process etc.. They designed the inserts for our critical components to ensure that our components remain intact when placed inside the crate. All the crates were loaded on the pallet and were shipped to the customer. Once our goods were unloaded by the customer the pallets & crates were collected by CHEP from the customer location.

The customer was happy with the change we had adopted. They received the components in good condition and they didn’t have to dispose the packaging goods. We actually got a call from the customer acknowledging the positive change.

CHEP even offered us their Logistics service to drop pallets & crates at our location and pick up the same from customer location. We were not required to buy pallets anymore!!!!!! We only paid the rent for the pallets used which released the capital usually blocked in buying these one-time use packaging goods. Our Stores area was improved. They were clean with neatly loaded CHEP Blue Pallets & Foldable crates. It also saved the logistics and storage costs as the Crates occupy less space in foldable condition.

And guess what, we used CHEP solution for our international supplies and once again without buying anything!!! We loaded the products on CHEP India’s pallets and supplied goods to Europe and the pallets were picked up by CHEP region in Europe. We don’t have to pay to customers for disposing the packaging goods!!!

And came the 1^st Monday of the next month. The snacks were ordered, weekends were discussed, MOMs were read and the status of Pallet Standardization was discussed. The benefits of adopting CHEP solution was very clear in terms of reduced damage to goods, less time and man power required to manage the pallets. It had great environmental impact as the CHEP Blue pallets were reused over and again by different customers.

Indeed Blue is the New Green…!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hats off to CHEP for introducing this unique concept in India…!!!!!

I insist that if you are looking for a packaging solution give a call or drop a mail to CHEP and experience it yourself.