Supply Chain Asset Management – Returnable Containers
Move Beyond Traceability with Always Up-To-Date Information About Your Containers and Parts
What Are Returnable Containers?
The name helps best describe these containers – reusable. These containers can be made of metal or plastic and are used in place of corrugate or cardboard alternatives that may only be usable a handful of times. Choosing returnable containers for use in your supply chain means that you will experience less waste due to less single-use options needed, and can keep the containers in circulation between suppliers and customers for years.
Companies often make significant investment to purchase reusable or returnable containers, so the next natural question is how those containers can be tracked and monitored over time. Suppliers and manufacturers often work with multiple companies, meaning the containers can easily be misplaced or not in the right place at the right time, significantly impacting the ability to plan for production capacity and shipping operations.
How Do Returnable Containers Impact Your Supply Chain Operations?
Choosing to use returnable and reusable containers, pallets and racks is an investment that eliminates waste of single-use container alternatives. Additionally, using these containers allows for greater predictability of inventory flow, confidence in shipment planning, and consistency in quantity or volume each time.
All of these benefits add up to cost savings, labor efficiency, and operational planning that impacts critical business functions.
However, these savings can only be recognized when you combine a returnable container program with a returnable container tracking system. With the investment needed to stand up a fleet of reusables, why wouldn’t you add the assurance and insight that IoT technology brings to the mix?
Surgere Solutions for Returnable Container Management
Surgere’s engineering and operations teams work with you to understand each component and process step in your supply chain operations. From one facility to many, and from your company to others, tracking your investment in reusables ensures that you always know what is in process, where the containers are, and when you’re getting them back.
Returnable container tracking is typically done with Passive RFID technology as it is immensely scalable for millions of assets without adding significant costs. Additionally, RFID allows for flexibility of layering in multiple IoT technologies such as GPS or Ultra Wideband (UWB) to enhance traditional inbound and outbound data captured with RFID.
If the assets and containers are high value and smaller volume, Bluetooth (BLE) can also be considered.
Surgere’s team of experts will consult with you on the various factors and considerations for your facility and operational requirements and specify the solution that is best for today and into the future.
Interius Returnable Container Tracking Benefits
- Increase productivity by eliminating manual and redundant processes
- Reduce transportation costs through cube and trailer optimization
- Real-time visibility to status and location of assets
- Reduce costs in the workforce and lost assets