Growth is important to all businesses, but small ones will find it especially exciting. Growth means your product is in demand and revenue is increasing, but it also means you may start struggling to keep up with the regular demands of your growing supply chain and distribution operations. You might be running out of room to store products or you may be finding your manpower taxed as you try to get everything packed and shipped in a timely manner.

Situations like this are when turning to third-party warehousing and distribution services can be beneficial. Such services enable you to meet the demands of your growing business while minimizing stressors, avoid the full burdens of warehousing and distribution management, and otherwise focus on continuing growth.

Get Warehousing and Distribution Management to Focus on Building Your Business

Coordinating shipments, managing storage space, organizing order delivery, working out logistics, and more are all basic parts of warehouse and distribution management. Unfortunately, they also take up a lot of time that you could put to better use focusing on your core business and growth. Third-party warehousing and distribution services provide skilled management and supply chain integration, allowing you to devote your energy to the projects that matter most to you.

Reaching a Larger Geographic Area

As you try and grow your business, it is natural to try and expand your reach and start finding customers who are farther and farther away. As a result, you will need to find a way to properly scale up your distribution and supply chain operations to match these new distances while also making sure customers aren’t kept waiting inordinate amounts of time. Third-party warehousing and distribution services have centres in key geographic areas that allow for better regional access. By taking advantage of their infrastructure, you can get a larger reach than would be possible alone.

Smaller Initial Investment

Getting a warehousing and distribution service started on your own takes a lot of time, money, and energy. You need to find a property, buy the property, hire workers and managers, make sure everything is up to code, organize processing and shipping procedures, coordinate with the supply chain, and plenty more. As mentioned above, third-party providers already have most if not all of this infrastructure in place already. Furthermore, warehousing and distribution service providers split costs among multiple clients. This allows greater flexibility in how you take advantage of their services since you only need to pay for what you use. Smaller investments mean smaller risks and also free up more funds for core business activities.

Finding the Right Third-Party Partner

Ideally, you will partner with a warehousing and distribution company that shares your preference for flexible, cost-effective services. This is part of the reason why Lean Supply Solutions created the Lean Methodology. Our proven philosophy is based around eliminating any operations, equipment, or resources that are not capable of adding value to your supply chain. By ensuring the right products are provided to the right customers at the right time, we offer consistent, predictable, and quality results. To learn more about the Lean Methodology and how we can use it to help your business, give us a call at 416-748-8982.

When most people think about ways to optimize supply chain management, a few things commonly come to mind, with improving delivery times, reducing errors, and better customer service being common ways of enhancing supply chain efficiency. However, there are a number of additional means through which you can get extra value from your operations, though some are more hidden than others.

Make Use of the Cloud

The cloud is a form of virtual storage that hosts files online. The advantage of cloud storage is twofold. First, essential information is safe in the event something happens to your systems and computers. Second, that information can be accessed from any internet-enabled device, so you can monitor reports or prepare documentation from anywhere with a signal. While the cloud should not be the only form of storage your business uses, taking advantage of its features can streamline many managerial elements and help keep everyone on the same page.

Use Social Media

Facebook, LinkedIn, and the like are probably not the first things to jump to mind when looking for ways to enhance supply chain profitability, but these tools can be surprisingly useful. Social media lets you keep an eye on developments among clients, manufacturers, and suppliers, allowing you to stay abreast of current issues, network with other businesses, and forge better connections with customers. While these are not directly tied to supply chain enhancements, they can all lead to improvements and attracting more business.

Inventory Management

There is a careful balancing act between keeping inventory low (only having as much as you need) and having enough extra stock on hand to cover unexpected developments like late shipments or last-minute orders. Developing a robust inventory management system will help alert you to possible shortfalls ahead of time, more accurately anticipate customer demand, and create an adaptive but efficient means of controlling stock levels.

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)

One of the more useful technologies in supply chain management is Radio Frequency identification (RFID). By placing these chips on each product, inventory tracking becomes a highly simplified and manageable activity. This makes it easy to improve supply chain efficiency since errors in orders can be quickly recognized and fixed and maximum visibility over shipments is present at all times. The integration of RFID and computerized systems also allows for simplified supply chain services and lower operating costs overall.

Establish Metrics

You can’t improve unless you know what needs improving, and getting proper metrics established plays a huge role in this. You may find that your current evaluation misses key factors or is otherwise looking at the wrong thing. It’s also possible there are odd inefficiencies entrenched in your practices just because “that’s the way it’s always been done.” Taking time to not only develop a proper means of assessing performance but putting a critical eye on your own operations can find areas of value, areas that need improving, and areas that need to be cut out altogether.

Analyze Information with Customer Needs in Mind

The first part of customer-focused analysis is to make sure products are getting delivered in a timely and affordable manner for both you and the recipient. The second part is not considered as often: figuring out if what you have is what customers actually want. Every product has its own niche and popularity, or lack thereof, and being able to track and analyze this information can give insight into customer desires and help you plan out future approaches.

Lean Profitability

These tips are just some of the things Lean Supply Solutions keeps in mind when carrying out the “Lean Methodology,” a proven philosophy based around eliminating any operations, equipment, and/or resources that are not capable of adding value to our clients’ supply chain services and efficiency. By striving to ensure that the right products are provided to the right customers at the right time, Lean Supply Solutions is able to offer consistent, predictable, and quality results.

To learn more about the Lean Methodology or Lean Supply Solutions’ warehousing and distribution services, or to ask any questions you may have, give us a call at 416-748-8982.

When outsourcing to a 3rd party logistics (3PL) warehousing provider, your business can acquire several key benefits that increase supply chain efficiency and fulfillment productivity. When considering whether or not to outsource your warehousing needs, keep the following in mind.

Benefits of Outsourcing Warehousing and Distribution

 

Simplified Workflow

Warehousing is not a single process; it involves coordinating multiple individuals, some of whom might be from different companies. Trying to coordinate between freight carriers, warehouse workers, drayage operators, and more can start making your workflow charts a headache to read. When outsourcing, this process becomes much simpler because all of these roles are filled by the same company. This ensures that everything is kept on track and coordinated, as well as makes communication easier.

Saves Costs

Maintaining a warehouse, its equipment, and the necessary staff is an expensive endeavour. However, you do not need to pay all of these if you engage with a 3PL warehousing provider. This is because 3PL companies usually have multiple clients that use their facilities. By allowing clients to only pay for what they need, these companies are able to diffuse operational expenses and businesses get to see lower costs than if they tried going at it alone.

Lets You Focus on the Core

Unless your core business is already shipping and warehousing, chances are you have better things to do than devote time and energy to running a warehouse. Outsourcing allows you to focus more on your core business operations while knowing that you have a talented and experienced partner fulfilling your warehousing needs.

Flexibility

It’s natural for businesses to grow and shrink over time and e-commerce and retail operations naturally see peaks and valleys depending on the time of year. 3PL warehousing services are flexible and scalable so you can dial down or ramp up the storage and distribution services on an as-needed basis, creating a more efficient and productive supply chain as a result.

Location, Location, Location

If you were to run your warehousing or distribution efforts in-house, you would quickly find yourself held back by location. Unless you have the finances to establish multiple distribution centers or warehouse sites, your potential delivery radius is going to be constrained. 3PL warehousing providers already have multiple facilities that you can choose from, so you can not only pick the site that works best for your business’s needs, but also jump right in and get started without needing to wait for building and hiring.

Reasons to Outsource Warehousing and Distribution

If you find yourself looking to improve in any of the following areas, you should consider the possibility of outsourcing your warehouse and distribution needs to a 3PL provider:

• You are looking to create a more unified and efficient warehousing operation

• You want to expand into new geographic areas but lack the distribution infrastructure

• You find it difficult to split your time and focus between warehouse management and growing your business

• You want to avoid gaps in productivity that come from needing to find and hire new warehouse workers in anticipation of spikes in demand

These problems and more can be solved with Lean Supply Solutions and our Lean Methodology. This is a proven philosophy that is based around eliminating any operations, equipment, or resources that are not capable of adding value to our clients’ supply chain, warehousing, manufacturing, fulfillment, or distribution efforts. By striving to ensure that the right products are provided to the right customers at the right time, Lean Supply Solutions is able to offer consistent, predictable, and quality results.

To learn more about the Lean Methodology or Lean Supply Solutions’ warehousing or distribution services, or to ask any questions, give us a call at 416-748-8982

For decades, product distribution largely remained the same. Products were delivered to set retail locations in bulk and often on a set schedule. With the rise of e-commerce business models, this traditional form of supply is starting to show its age.

E-commerce, with its direct-to-consumer model, has variable destinations, much smaller volume per shipment, and is expected to reach the customer within a few days of an order being placed. These new realities mean regular distribution centres aren’t going to cut it anymore. You need fulfillment facilities that are designed to be agile, efficient, and flexible to meet the demands of e-commerce.

Unfortunately many small businesses lack the infrastructure or funds to launch such enterprises on their own. This is where third-party (3PL) supply chain comes into play and how forming third-party partnerships can boost your e-commerce success.

Assessing Third-Party Fulfillment Capabilities for e-Commerce Operations

Third-party partnerships are becoming more common as businesses turn away from in-house fulfillment. This allows businesses to draw on the fulfillment partner’s established distribution network, warehousing services, and other features, without having to engage in the upfront investment it would take to obtain them alone. Although every fulfillment service operates differently, there are some common elements that you should keep an eye out for. These services represent key needs in the world of e-commerce, and you will struggle without having them in place through one method or another.

Warehousing and Distribution

Distribution centres and warehousing still play a key role in e-commerce. As long as your products have to sit somewhere before getting ordered, warehousing services will continue to be important. However, a warehouse is useless without a way to get products from storage to the customer, hence the need for distribution channels. As mentioned above, the distribution and shipping method must be flexible enough to get products to customers within a few days, ideally no more than 48 hours under normal conditions.

Pick-and-Pack Fulfillment Services

Although normally defined as a value-added service, pick-and-pack is becoming increasingly necessary in e-commerce operations. This is because customers expect a degree of customizability in their orders and you cannot always assume that products will be sold in set combinations. Therefore, being able to pick the ordered items and quickly pack and ship them is even more necessary than ever.

Returns Management

Online orders are returned at a much higher rate than products purchased at brick-and-mortar locations. As a result, no product fulfillment operation can succeed without a way to efficiently process returns with minimal burden on the customer. Additionally, the third-party service provider must have a way of recapturing value from returned merchandise as a way to minimize costs.

Integrated Information Technology

One of the benefits of e-commerce is that it is much more responsive to technological integration. By linking online ordering systems to warehouse management software and inventory control programs, portions of the warehousing and shipping process can be automated, and products can be tracked in real time. This allows a constant, eagle-eye view of the supply chain that ensures nothing gets missed.

A Lean, Mean, Fulfillment Machine

What all of this adds up to is that your ideal third-party fulfillment service comes in a lean, agile form that can respond to the unique needs of your customer base and shipping operations. This is part of the tenets behind Lean Supply Solutions and the Lean Methodology. Our proven philosophy is based around eliminating any operations, equipment, or resources that are not capable of adding value to your 3PL supply chain. By ensuring the right products are provided to the right customers at the right time, we offer consistent, predictable, and quality results. To learn more about the Lean Methodology and how we can use it to provide e-commerce fulfillment services, give us a call at 416-748-8982.

When it comes to getting the most value out of your warehousing and distribution systems, efficiency is crucial. Being efficient saves time and money that can be used to grow other parts of your operation. To that end, it’s time to look at one option that can help almost any business save money. It’s time to talk about kitting.

What Is Warehouse Kitting?

Kitting process refers to combining two or more finished products into a larger group, which is then sold or delivered as a package. Kits are considered a single unit no matter how many individual products make them up even if they have their own SKUs and tracking numbers. Kitting can apply to many types of products, but it is seen in some more than others. A few common examples of product kits are:

• Book series
• Product samplers
• Promotional packets
• Computer or video game bundles
• Media kits
• Commonly purchased bundles, like “two for one” or “two for the price of three” deals

Basically, a kit is any pre-defined set of products that would be commonly grouped together or are purchased as a single package.

How Does Kitting Save Money?

The key way kitting saves money is by speeding up the productivity flow of the warehouse. Without kitting, workers only assemble the package when the order comes in, taking time to pick-and-pack individual components before wrapping them up and adding the proper SKU. With kitting, all of this is done beforehand. The kit itself becomes an inventory item that can be taken from the warehouse shelf and sent along to the customer.

The Benefits of Kitting

• If you do your order fulfillment in house, you save time that can be used to stay on top of (or get ahead of) other orders.
• If you outsource fulfillment, kitting can save you money since it results in lower pick-and-pack costs (since each kit is considered a single unit)
• Shipping items in kitted form, instead of assembling them later, means fewer mistakes and returns.
• You can develop custom boxes to allow for more efficient and cost-effective packaging.

The Key to Efficient, Effective Operations

Lean Supply Solutions is a third-party logistics provider that uses the Lean Methodology to help clients by overseeing all elements of the supply chain, including providers, infrastructure, and participants. Our proven philosophy is based around eliminating any operations, equipment, or resources that are not capable of adding value to your supply chain. By ensuring the right products are provided to customers at the right time, we offer consistent, predictable, and quality results. To learn more about the Lean Methodology and how we can use it to help your business, give us a call at 416-748-8982.