Every hand-off matters: Building accountability across the supply chain
Where did that pallet go?
A pallet leaves your warehouse. Then what?
Pallets are very well travelled. They might journey from your warehouse to a distribution centre then to a logistics provider then to a warehouse and then to a customer. They get unloaded, emptied, stacked somewhere, moved again and eventually begin the return journey. Or not.
You still own them, but you are no longer in control. That’s the vexing problem with managing returnable assets. Pallets, crates, totes, kegs, roll cages, shipping containers and many other forms of returnable and reusable assets spend much of their working lives outside the organisation that owns them.
And every hand-off creates another opportunity for visibility to reduce, or disappear.
Why do returnable assets go missing?
Sometimes they might be genuinely lost or damaged. Often it’s just a simple case of nobody knowing exactly where they are. During a delivery they may not be recorded properly. Pallets accumulate out the back of a customer site, crates are moved to another location, empty kegs wait for collection or roll cages get mixed up with returnable assets belonging to another organisation.
With thousands of portable and fast-moving items going constantly between multiple organisations and destinations, you can very quickly have an expensive visibility problem. And it’s not just about the cost of replacement.
If returnable assets aren’t where they are supposed to be, you might need to purchase more to keep the supply chain moving. Poor utilisation increases the size of the asset pool required, while staff spend valuable time searching, chasing and reconciling.
What’s the best way to track pallets, kegs and crates?
As volumes and movement increase, RFID is a reliable and scalable solution because tagged items can be identified automatically, at a distance and even without line of sight. Static readers can be positioned at key points in various locations to track assets as they move through the supply chain. Handheld readers can be used in yards or warehouses or other storage environments to identify assets that may be stored or stacked and out of sight.
When returnable assets are tracked more frequently and accurately as they move around, the conversation changes from “200 pallets are missing” to “these assets were last recorded at these locations”.
Every hand-off is a data capture opportunity
Better visibility clearly helps track valuable assets and reduce the cost of replacing them. But there’s additional value in understanding how the asset pool is performing. Capturing asset data as pallets, kegs, crates and containers move through the supply chain can tell you not only where these assets are, but how the entire asset pool is performing.
Rather than spending valuable time searching for returnable assets, you can spend time asking more important questions:
- How long does a typical return cycle take?
- Where do assets spend the most time?
- Which locations or customers consistently return them promptly?
- Where are losses occurring?
This is why returnable asset tracking is about more than recovery. Ramp RFID helps connect visibility with improved asset utilisation, reduced losses, better allocation and more informed decisions around asset replacement and investment.
If you want to improve returnable asset visibility and utilisation, talk to the asset tracking experts at Ramp RFID.
Common questions about returnable asset tracking
Returnable transport items, or RTIs, are reusable assets used to move goods though a supply chain. They can include pallets, crates, totes, trays, roll cages, racks and other types of reusable containers.
A good place to start is improving visibility at key points where assets change location or custody. Giving assets unique identities and recording key movements makes it easier to identify where losses or delays are occurring and establish accountability.
Yes. RFID can identify and track tagged assets as they move through read points across multiple locations. The ideal solution will depend on the type of asset, environment/s in which they are located and the typical movement process.
No. High volume, lower value assets can incur significant financial costs when large numbers of them disappear and need to be replaced, not to mention the time the organisation spends manually checking and chasing them. The business case for RFID comes from reducing losses, improving asset utilisation and avoiding unnecessary replacement and additions to the asset pool.
