Past Provides Valuable Pallet Management Tips

What’s the best pallet system design for a particular customer? Part of my approach is to use comparison studies. I overlay the client’s program with the strengths and weaknesses of the pallet systems used by competitors and similar businesses in the same geographic market. I also compare pallet programs of different divisions of the same client in other markets or those of the same type of business in other markets.

                      It is not often that we look to the past for comparative tips on designing pallet management programs. Over the years I have talked to veteran and retired managers of in-house pallet programs who really had mastered the pallet management game. Unfortunately, the management expertise reaped by these programs often ends up lost. Programs are dismantled by new generations of executives and waves of restructuring, and old file cabinets are emptied.

                      I have seen dozens of people with responsibility for managing pallet programs who have made unnecessary mistakes. They were unnecessary because these managers would not have made the mistakes if they had had access to the right information gleaned from past pallet management programs. In part because there has been no organized pool of pallet management knowledge, we see the same mistakes being made in succeeding generations.

                      One area where past pallet practices have been carefully documented is the U.S. military’s logistics and supply chain experience during World War II. Here are some pallet management tips from that era that I find still ring true today.

1. Get the best professional advice.

                      I know industries that spend millions of dollars a year more than they need on pallets because they do not take advantage of the best available information.

                      In 1941 the Office of the Quartermaster General hired Matthew Potts, a leading material handling consultant and writer of the day, to survey leading factories and warehouses and make recommendations for U.S. military supply depot practices. He reported back that pallets and forklifts, along with tractors, trailers, cranes and conveyors, were becoming increasingly used at the country’s leading factories, warehouses, shipyards and transportation terminals. The military heeded his advice and moved aggressively into palletized handling of supplies.

2.   Create policy at a high level and coordinate, communicate.

                      Over my last quarter of a century in dealing with pallet users, there has been one glaring problem with their pallet programs. It is the lack of enlightened involvement from top executives. Throw in poor efforts in the areas of coordination and communication, and you’ve served up a sub-optimal pallet program.

                      During World War II, palletized handling of supplies was viewed as a key component of the military’s materiel handling strategy, and as such it was managed and directed from a high organizational level. Meetings were held between the Navy, Air Force and Army to coordinate palletization efforts. Navy facilities in Hingham, Mass., performed pallet design and testing and also sponsored a sophisticated magazine – The Palletizer — with information to help pallet users.

3. Optimize the network through standardization, pooling.

                      Although other trade publications for the last decade or more have heralded the ‘new’ concept of pallet pooling, the truth is the U.S. military understood decades earlier the benefits of pooling as well as the need for standardization to support effective pooling. The military not only recognized the benefits of pooling but worked hard to promote standardization.

4. Even though it is important to standardize, in many applications, one size does not fit all.

                      While the military strove to move toward standardization, it also recognized the need for more than one standard. For example, it created a pool of collapsible box pallets for handling certain crushable supplies. Several sizes were created at various depots to address specific needs early in the war, but the Office of the Quartermaster General planned for their gradual phase-out with replacement pallets conforming to a narrower range of sizes.

                      How many industries today lack effective pools because they are paralyzed by numerous legacy sizes and cannot coordinate a transition to a narrower band of standard sizes?

5. Cube is important.

                      With the cost of transportation, cube utilization remains a front burner issue, but it is rare to hear discussion of pallet cube.

                      Early in the World War II palletization effort, the Eastern quartermaster depots strongly resisted compliance, and palletization struggled to get off the ground. Was it just resistance to change, or was it concern about cube loss resulting from pallet usage (10% of ocean freight)? Pallet redesign to a lower profile pallet helped spur eventual acceptance.

6. Re-use what comes in the back door and send it out the front door.

The Office of the Quartermaster General recognized that it could improve efficiency by demanding that pallets received under load conform to requirements for military shipping.

                      How many companies still do not do this today?

                      The sad truth is that there is no organized body of knowledge that new pallet program decision makers can refer to in order to get up to speed quickly on pallet management – other than articles from the Pallet Enterprise Web site or specific chapters in Pallets: A North American Perspective.

                      The good news is that pallet users quite often benefit from professional advice of pallet providers or through third-party management. In that the delivery of valuable advice is a source of competitive advantage, the market is moving to fill the information void.