How Do Integrated Inventory Management Systems Benefit You?

Whether ordering raw materials or preventing bottlenecks in your production line, integrated inventory management systems provide you with high quality information to streamline your business, automate processes, and reduce costs. Carefully maintaining the cost of ordering, transporting, and storing inventory of raw materials and finished goods is absolutely critical to staying lean in these uncertain economic times.

Automation

Many inexpensive inventory softwares will help you automate your reordering and restocking processes. As product moves off your production line or out your dock door to be delivered to your customers, it is scanned and registered within the inventory management system. You can select an automatic reorder once inventory levels fall below your buffer as determined by the lead time of your suppliers. This helps you minimize the cost of storing raw materials and finished products inventory.

Pricing

As you begin to reduce your operational costs, you may find that you can extend these costs savings to your customers to further drive business and reach a greater market. Depending on your product and market, you may be able to lower your sales price to generate demand and sell to more customers. While this requires careful attention to customer demand and stock levels, it can effectively be integrated into your business strategy.

Identifying Inefficiencies

One of the biggest advantages of having a software solution in place to help you manage inventory is the access you will have to accurate, real-time data. This data can be modeled and manipulated to help you identify opportunities, areas for improvement, and potential threats to your business. Many inventory software solutions are operated from an incredibly user-friendly web portal. From here, reports can quickly and easily be generated to help you identify new opportunities.

A professional logistics consultant can be a great asset in integrating an inventory management system into your business. Visit PerimeterLogistics.com today to see how you can make the transition!

Does Your Operation Need a Contract Warehouse?

Many small business owners are effectively outsourcing greater and greater portions of their companies to create a ‘lifestyle business’ or entrepreneurial ‘muse.’ Essentially these business are bootstrapped at the lowest possible cost before operations are systemized and outsourced to create passive income for the business owner. One of the key steps in this process for businesses that sell physical products is to outsource distribution to a contract warehouse.

With a dedicated contract to a warehouse or fulfillment company, you can outsource all product handling and order fulfillment so that you can focus solely on growing your business. Most fulfillment houses are located centrally within your market to achieve the lowest possible delivery time to your most remote customers. Your warehousing partner can even manage inventory levels and reorder product straight from the manufacturer.

Orders can be received online and fulfilled by the competent and highly-trained warehousing staff. Delivery will then be scheduled for maximum cost effectiveness to the consumer. Should there be any problems with an order, most fulfillment operations offer a customer service department to handle complaints.

Imagine not having to worry about or ever even physically see and touch your products. All operations regarding the movement of your products can be completely automated allowing you to focus on sales and strategy until even this can be outsourced. Contract warehouses are the ticket for making your passive income dreams happen.

Since they often serve multiple clients, a warehousing provider can significantly defray his costs and pass that savings on to each client. Outsourcing logistics is always far more cost-effective than attempting to build and maintain these same systems in house. A warehousing provider has already absorbed the costs of industrial space, labor, and security measures. They are often staffed with teams of highly educated transportation engineers who work together to increase the efficiency of operations, and provide world-class service to both their clients and their clients’ customers.

For more information on how you can use contract warehousing to outsource your product handling operations, click here now!

Temperature Controlled Trailers and Food Safety

Each day, more and more meals are consumed outside the home, necessitating the movement of millions of cases of produce and other food consumables to be delivered to restaurants, hospitals, and college campuses nationwide. Moving these highly perishable goods safely from the farm to your dinner plate requires a highly orchestrated network of transportation providers to move goods safely and prevent spoil or contaimination by pest or disease. Temperature controlled containers help food shippers maintain the best possible enviroment to keep food safe during storage and shipment.

Every company that moves food items has in place a complex system for ensuring consumer protection as per regulations set forth by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA). These agencies issue ‘best practices’ guidelines every year for everything from sanitation to packing to warehousing. All of these best practices in some way refer to a shippers ability to maintain a ‘cold’ supply chain. 

As you know from storing milk, cheese, eggs, meat and vegetables in your refrigerator, food items can be preserved in cold environments. Using refrigerated docks and temperature and humidity regulated containers, distribution companies are able to maintain a strict temperature and humidity profile to slow down the deterioration of food goods, create an inhospitable environment for bacteria, mold and fungi, and maintain inventory at its most pristine levels. Using temperature and humidity regulated trailers and containers provides a temperature controlled mobile storage solution to preserve goods no matter their destination.

Companies face the potentially crippling cost of legal settlements should someone become ill because food products were contaminated during shipment. However maintaining a pristine supply chain from farm to fork is a definite challenge. Climate controlled containers are simply the best way for food distributors and retailers to maintain the ‘cold’ chain and minimize risk of loss due to spoil, infestation or contamination.

Click here for more information on how climate regulated containers can help you keep your perishable goods safe during shipment or storage. 

5 Benefits of Contract Warehouses

A contract warehouse helps companies and entrepreneurs store inventory, supplies, raw materials, or any other good in a central location for maximum transportation efficiency. Since the warehouses are centrally located, they can be easily transported to nearly any destination in the contiguous U.S. It also allows businesses to outsource the costs of both space and labor associated with storing inventory. In order for businesses to succeed, many are taking advantage of outsourcing much of their operations to third parties. You are guaranteed to reduce your overhead costs and increase your bottom line by outsourcing your warehousing needs. Here are five benefits:

1. Services: Many warehouses offer a variety of services to cater to manufacturers and distributors. Whether you need packaging services, inventory control and management, local transportation, or ongoing maintenance and quality control, a contract warehouse can offer these services. The larger warehouses even offer fulfillment and customer relationship services. For many business owners, that means they can completely outsource operations so they can focus on strategy and building their business.

2. Cost: The difference in the cost of holding your goods in a contract warehouse versus a private warehouse is enormous. By taking advantage of serving multiple clients, a contract warehouse can make better use of their assets, namely, warehouse space and loading docks. This allows them to carry lower overhead costs, and those cost savings are then passed on to their clients.

3. Fees: In many public and private warehouses, the lessee is required to pay storage fees and loading and unloading fees anytime they ship goods. A contract warehouse can offer services at lower costs, and can often work with you to find the right combination of services to fit your budget.

4. Control: On the spectrum of warehouses, private facilities offer complete control with a the highest cost, similar to buying a house. A public warehouse is more like leasing an apartment, giving you little control. The contract warehouse serves up the perfect compromise between control and cost. This allows many small businesses to outsource their inventory holding and product fulfillment costs, so they can focus on generating more revenue and other business critical tasks. 

To reduce your warehousing and inventory control costs, check out the many great contract warehouse services available at PerimeterLogistics.com!

3 Advantages of a Roller Bed Trailer

A roller bed trailer or truck is a great way to safely load and unload large and heavy loads of goods. These trailers consist of a flat bed with rolling pins on the bottom allowing containers and loads to easily roll off of the truck, making transporting heavy loads much more safe and convenient. This can serve a variety of businesses and industries load goods for shipment quickly and easily, without the safety risk and labor costs needed to manually lift cartons and other loads into trucks. Here are three advantages to using a truck or trailer with a roller bed.

1. Greater Loading/Unloading Safety: Loading and unloading a roller bed is likely the number one safest way to move goods for transportation or storage. Loading into a normal truck requires a precarious ramp that the driver will have to push and drag a dolly up and down to move the cargo. As the driver tires, his chance of slipping and injuring himself, and the chance of him spilling a load over the side of the ramp increases exponentially. This is an unnecessary risk that can be mitigated simply by using the right type of truck or trailer. 

2. Greater Transport Safety: Trucks with roller beds are by far the best way to transport goods locally or even across state lines. While many are concerned that their goods will simply roll out of the trailer during transport, roller bed technology makes this an impossibility. Trailers are angled slightly to maintain the cargo’s center of balance. Whenever the emergency brake is released and the truck begins to go into motion, the rollers lower so that your cargo sits on a flat friction-heavy surface, keeping your goods in place for the duration of their trip.

3. Faster Loading and Unloading: Lastly, these trailers lend themselves to fast loading and unloading. Because goods can simply be rolled up and into the trailer, and the bed angled to gently slide products out of the trailer, many drivers are able to cut their dock times in half. 

To get a quote on a roller bed trailer to help you ship goods or move your household items to your new home, contact PerimeterLogistics.com today!