The Logistical Lowdown

Location carries a lot of weight when it comes to considering your warehousing and fulfillment center options. It’s all about finding a balance between having your distribution centers close enough to your customers and not too far apart that your inventory costs skyrocket. Whether you’re just starting to outsource your storage and shipping or looking to expand, it can be difficult to settle on a location that’s the ideal fit for your business.

As logistics professionals, we all know that a low rate is nothing without good service to match. A late delivery on an important shipment, or any other type of supply chain service failure, can cost far more than what the carrier or a fulfillment center’s being paid. And when problems do occur, the provider who made the mistake is still usually getting their money with no penalty for the extra cost or wasted time that their performance failure caused.

First impressions can be everything when it comes to the way people perceive your brand, especially when the stakes are high and you’re up against the fierce competition. For many manufacturers and retailers, the opportunity for attracting new customers and making an excellent first impression that lasts lies in the secondary packaging of their product.

When you outsource your essential packaging services to a trusted third party, this process is often referred to as contract packaging or co-packing. Whether your business needs help scaling or you simply lack the proper equipment, experience, or facilities, there are many reasons you can benefit from working with a co-packer.

Contract packaging, or co-packing, has become a vital manufacturing option for many companies that don’t have the resources to manage the process effectively by themselves. Logistics businesses — especially those in the food and beverage, health, and pharmaceutical industries — that capitalize on this service can produce large orders without having to scale their manufacturing practices or staff, giving them a lot of advantages over their competition.

Look around wherever you are and you will likely see "Help Wanted" or "Now Hiring" signs hung in windows and posted on doors. An online search for employment on most any type of position or job, will get several, if not hundreds, of options for employers looking for qualified candidates. Look even more closely, and you'll notice that some of these positions have been open or active for months!

Companies have had to change the way they look at talent recruiting. The days of running an ad in the local newspaper and sitting back to watch the candidates flock in are long gone.

On June 1st 2018, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released a statement saying, "The unemployment rate edged down to 3.8 percent in May." This is the lowest unemployment rate since 2000 and a sign that the job market has become even more competitive and "manufacturing employment continued to expand over the month (+18,000)." Additionally, their workforce statistics have preliminary job openings in manufacturing at 451,000 for April 2018.

As the competition for qualified workers continues to grow, manufacturers are needing to come up with outside of the box solutions for labor and staffing in order to meet customers' product demand. One way to combat the shortage in the labor market is to outsource aspects of your manufacturing to a contract packager.

In previous posts, we’ve talked about why you should use a contract packager, and how to choose a contract packager. Now it’s time to talk about the different packaging services a contract packager can provide.

Contract packaging involves packaging products into two main categories – Primary and Secondary packaging.

• Primary packaging consists of the first layer of containment that comes in direct contact with the product.
• Secondary packaging is any packaging material that secures or otherwise protects the product in its primary packaging.

How valuable is warehouse space? I'm not just talking about price per square foot. What warehouse features and value-add services would make your logistics more efficient, save time and money? Perhaps our Napoleon, Ohio warehouse location may be the perfect fit for you.