Barcodes are important in shipping, tracking, inventorying, managing, and purchasing food products—especially when you want to distribute and sell products in a retail setting. But coming up with a barcode for a new food product has a few requirements. The process is fairly simple, but here’s what you need to know before you get started.

Any business that needs to keep track of something understands the challenges associated with this task. It’s costly, time-consuming, prone to error, and sometimes inefficient. Businesses have used barcode technology for many years, but RFID has many advantages as a tracking solution. Here is what you need to know about the latest RFID trends in 2023 and some of the ways this technology is being used.

It's one of the most magical days of the year for many families and their young children. As the holiday season approaches, Santa Claus needs to figure out how to get gifts to hundreds of millions of households in a matter of hours. That's a hefty responsibility, and the consequence of not meeting his deadlines is countless disappointed children. No one wants that!

The supply chain is the flow of materials from suppliers to manufacturers to warehouses to consumers. Each company has a unique supply chain, and this is something that businesses are constantly working to improve in terms of accuracy and efficiency. 

Accurate and real-time data is vital to an effective supply chain. To manage their inventory properly, businesses must be able to track their goods at all stages of the supply chain process. This can now be accomplished using RFID technology. Here is what you need to know about RFID and the ways it is transforming the supply chain.

Whatever the nature of the business — from consumer packaged goods to online products to pharmaceuticals — the ultimate success of the enterprise hinges on the efficiency of its supply chain. Increasingly complex supply chains can not only be distracting but also costly and a disaster for businesses in competitive industries.

There is probably a higher level of public awareness about how the logistics industry works and its technology than ever before. Who hasn’t had at least a passing interest in how a nation plans to get over 300 million doses of a vaccine distributed in a manner of a few months?

How do you measure success in your warehouse? Every business has their own “dashboard” of KPIs (at least we ASSUME they do by now). Your KPIs could be as granular – and basic - as “Picks Per Hour”, “Receiving Wait Time”, “Packages Shipped” or “Fulfillment Rate”. Or they could be at a more macro level to measure “Inventory Turnover”, “Average Order Value” (or “Average Items per Order”) and “Forecast Accuracy” (along with basic tracking forecast elements).

Last week we continued our drill-down into the common challenges facing manufacturers and distribution businesses by focusing on Inventory (See “Four Inventory Management Challenges for 2020”). This week we’re going to dig down another level within the Inventory space by looking at it through the lens of the Six Sigma’s “Eight Forms of Waste”. Since we like to keep things to a short read of 5-7 minutes, we’ll focus on three of them today specifically in how they relate to the challenges of Inventory management.

Our last regular article of 2019 was about the major challenges we see coming in Manufacturing and Distribution, particularly in the food industry. This year we wanted to start with something that drills down a bit deeper into one of those challenges – Inventory Management. The good news on this topic is that most of the challenges you will have in 2020 are the same as the ones you were having in 2019. The bad news is that they are just getting harder is the speed and complexity of transportation and logistics continues to evolve, and there is one important new one.

Today we’ll cover FOUR challenges you need to be monitoring and solving for if you are not already doing so:

1. Knowing Your Inventory
2. Inefficient Processes
3. Customer Demand
4. The Coming Packaging Revolution

The Food & Beverage Industry is always one of the fastest-moving in regards to the changes that come every year in terms of consumer tastes, preferences, packaging, manufacturing, storage and transportation and more. For every familiar item that seems to have remain unchanged for generations (see “ice cream” or “eggs”), there are dozens of others ways it evolves visibly and invisibly and constantly creating new opportunities – and challenges. “Regenerative vertical farms” in the aquaponics industry, Plant-based substitutes for meat, but , coconut and oat-based dairy products and more are all creating challenges up and down the supply chain from the logistics supplying the manufacturers, the packaging, storage and even the marketing. In 2020, we expect to see some of these challenges create bigger obstacles than others. Which ones should you be paying attention to?