Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, consumers were becoming more conscious about the sources of the food they put on their tables, forcing a shift in supply chain transparency. Now, in a time of increased health concerns and supply chain troubles, there is an even more urgent need to secure consumer confidence with the assurance of food safety and reliability.

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed a host of vulnerabilities in the global food supply chain, leading to all sorts of disruptions across the country. Whether people are concerned about eating out at their favorite restaurant or getting ahold of their must-have snack food at the local grocer’s, fluctuating levels of supply and demand have created an unprecedented situation for food businesses. Here’s what you need to know about the current situation and six ways your food business can deal with supply chain disruptions.

With the last eighteen months have been unique in regards to how often the supply chain and logistics industries were featured in mainstream news, RFID technology continued to quietly inject itself into more and more corners of the industry – and beyond. While we have all been busy keeping up with the basics of our old supply chain, new versions of it continued to evolve even more rapidly.

As we continue our series of “challenges” that we started four weeks ago and will continue leading up to MODEX, we’re going to keep drilling down and spend a second week on the Eight Forms of Waste as they relate to Inventory. Last week we delved into the three areas of “Talent (Underutilized Resources)”, “Waiting Time” and “Extra Motion” (See “Eight Forms of Waste – Inventory, Part I”). This week we’ll look at four more forms of waste and how they impact your Inventory processes:

• Defects
• Transportation
• Extra Processing
• Over Production

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.