Skip to main content

Avoid Loads Rejects in Your Food Warehouse | LoadProof

 


Your Business

  • You distribute food products, which could fall under Dry, Produce or Frozen categories
  • You distribute alcohol products
  • You distribute pharma products
  • While doing this you often run into OSD issues, Overage, Shortages and Damages
    1. Overages – You shipped more than ordered, which could result in non-compliance chargeback
    2. Shortages – You shipped less than what was ordered, which could result in non-compliance chargeback
    3. Damages – Your products arrived damaged, which would result in a rejected load or a damage claim
  • While shipping food products it is also very important to clean the trailers thoroughly in order to comply with FDA requirements, I had a customer once they would write lines and lines of cleanliness description in the system after washing their trailers thoroughly, so just in case something happens, they can go back to their customer and show them how well they have been cleaning the trailers
  • Another challenge while shipping produce or frozen items is that, you will have to hand off product at the right temperature or else the product could perish, so it Is important to show a picture of the temperature gauge and the temperature during hand off.
  • Also keep in mind that Food distribution is one of the challenging business to run because the margins are thin. That is why often food distribution centers use sophisticated systems such as Voice, Labor Management Systems, even Robotic systems to keep the cost as low as possible.
  • You could also ship to retailers
  • As a warehouse manager, you are responsible for the following
    • The manager leads and coordinates all aspects of the distribution process within the Supply Chain network.
      Leads site’s planning, execution, and communication of all daily clerical and operational processes, including:

      • Labor Planning & Driver Management
      • OSHA, FDA and DOT Compliance
      • General Administrative Duties
        1. Employee hiring
        2. Payroll
      • Customer Service Responsibilities
      • Human Resource Administration
      • Product Functionality Checks and Cleaning
      • Warehouse Functions/ Servant Leadership
      • Load Planning, Routing, and Carrier Management
      • Collection/Reporting of KPI data
      • Sometimes you are responsible for the P&L of the site as well
    • You could specialize in many products some of them are
      1. Handling Food grade products – FMCG
      2. FDA DEA Regulated
      3. Just keep in mind – if you are handling products that require FDA approval – you have to maintain all the documentation for up to 12 years, it could be anywhere upto 3 or 7 or 12 years. We have a customer, these guys ship health related products, every return they get, they need to maintain that returns documentation for 12 years, they have this large warehouse that has only papers – all the returns documentation from the returns they received.

Your Supply Chain Community

Your Supply Chain community comprises of people that you do business with, usually it is made of all these people

  • Manufacturers that manufacture products
  • Carriers
    1. Trucking companies
    2. Ocean Carriers
    3. Rail Carriers
    4. Air Carriers
    5. Multi modal – Ocean, Land, Rail, Air
  • Third Party Logistics Service Providers
  • Vendors that you buy your products from
  • Cross Dock Facility operators
  • Consolidation Facility operators
  • LTL Terminals
  • Parcel Carriers
  • Delivery Companies
  • Freight Forwarders
  • Freight Brokers

It is very important to keep in mind that you will work with all these people on a regular basis, so build and maintain professional relationships. While shipping products, moving products mistakes do happen, sometimes it is theirs, sometimes it is yours, whatever it is work with your partners, keep proof in LoadProof to demonstrate that you did your job right. So, you can have a professional conversation and articulate your position in a professional way, it is okay to say in a very professional and gentle manner, “Hey it is not fair for us to pay for mistakes that is not ours, here is a proof in the form of pictures”. However, do not burn bridges everybody is working very hard to make it for themselves. Also, people move on and change roles very quickly in this industry, so the same person could take up a different role and you might face them in a completely different side. So always build and maintain professional relationships, do not burn bridges. So, when you are working with such a community of Supply Chain service providers, having LoadProof and pictures to prove that you did your job right, gives you a solid ground to stand on, when something happens to your shipment.

Click here to continue reading this article.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

5 reasons why you should switch from using your digital camera right now | LoadProof

  Are you still using digital cameras to capture and store photos of your shipments and other processes in your warehouse?  If the answer is “yes”, then there is a better way. Initially, you may not think it’s much to address, but when you think about how many photos are taken each day in your warehouse then there is a lot of time and money that can be saved by switching to a more efficient photo process.  Using digital cameras to capture photos, and PC’s to store the photos of the loads taken during shipment might result in issues such as:  Slow uploading - your camera likely requires a hardwire plug-in through USB. Time-consuming photo tagging - adding reference numbers or labels. Slow retrieval of photos - photos are often hard to search and locate. Sharing photos manually - manually attaching JPEG files to email. Accountability - there is no accountability as you don’t know who worked on the shipment. With an efficient photo documentation system will include: Fas...

Are you still using google drive in your warehouse? | LoadProof

  Here is another interesting dynamic about  LoadProof . Apparently somebody in their organization is interested and somebody saw the value of the product – LoadProof provides.  We get to talk to them and they’re curious. They want to learn more, and in our conversation this comes up: “hey we already use Google Drive, and we store pictures in Google Drive and and it was great for us”. This was actually a very interesting story. An intern from Georgia Tech, pretty smart kid, but they don’t understand all the implications of using an enterprise system for a recognized supply chain environment. In an established supply chain network, you’re dealing with so many different partners such as vendors, customers, transportation service providers, lumpers, etc., Supply chain is a huge community.  When you spend some time in the industry you understand all these different players and how to work with them and how to maintain the data integrity and still do business maintaining ...

Improve Quality in Your Supply Chain by Increasing Visibility | LoadProof

  I would think that electronics OEMs or distributors would be leading the charge toward quality, and I’m sure many of them are. However, the first time I encountered a quality department that did extensive quality control it was in a New Hampshire distribution center (DC) that served the apparel industry. For this manufacturer, the goal was to make fairly priced clothing that delivered good quality to middle-aged women. The Director of Quality at the warehouse, along with her team, did such a good job that this retailer was known for its quality. To meet their quality goals, workers spent a lot of time measuring the tops and pants against strict criteria, checking the cut of the pieces, figuring out how the pieces would look on real people, and making sure that the colors were good for a variety of skin tones. They thought of everything. They took pictures and shared infractions with their vendors across the supply chain. Quality inspection Quality inspection is a relatively simpl...