logistics Archives - DJ Products

What to Expect in 2019 in the Logistics and Transportation Industries

What to Expect in the Rest of 2019

What is the best way to use big data in logistics and transportation? In 2019 and beyond, businesses are under competitive pressure to turn the data they have into effective results. From overseas manufacturers to the terminal tractors and trucks at your warehouse, every piece needs to be in sync and taking advantage of the latest technology and data.

Transportation experts see organizations taking a “coherent and structured approach” to their newest initiatives. Whether it’s public transportation, warehouse shipping, or last-mile couriers, each segment needs to align its stakeholders under one vision of reliable, efficient logistics.

Logistics trends in 2019 include:

– Smart cities initiatives

– Customized service models

– Money-back guarantees

– Results-based investments using big data

– IoT solutions to solve TL, LTL, and parcel delivery issues

– Driverless vehicles to solve the shortage crisis

– Reducing transportation costs by minimizing loading and unloading delays

Controlling Costs and Improving Logistics Efficiency

New technology and approaches are emerging to cut down on the ever-rising costs of transportation. Once you have the data to identify bottlenecks, prevent overstocking, and streamline the supply chain, you need to put a plan into action.

At the warehouse, the digital age has already made inventory tracking easier. Transportation needs to catch up. All the speed in the world for ordering and picking doesn’t matter if you can’t get the trucks on the road just as fast.

To reduce wait times at the warehouse and move products more efficiently and less expensively, switch to electric terminal tractors instead of shunt trucks. TrailerCaddy Terminal Tractors from DJ Products cost less than a quarter of a shunt truck with lower maintenance, greater safety, and no CDL driver required.

To learn more about battery-powered, semi-trailer tow dollies and terminal tractors, contact DJ Products or call 1-800-686-2651.

Why Would Amazon Want to Start Its Own Shipping Network?

Check Out Our Yard Truck Products

Amazon will soon be adding a yard truck to its extensive assortment of warehouse equipment at its distribution centers. The online giant is preparing to launch a delivery service for businesses that will pit them head-to-head with established companies FedEx and UPS.

Shipping with Amazon

Amazon’s announcement of the new service initially caused stock prices for both FedEx and UPS to dip. While the current partnership between Amazon and UPS is expected to continue short-term, it’s unclear how it will be affected down the road.

The service, to be known as Shipping with Amazon, will begin by delivering shipments from the company’s third-party suppliers. Shipping with Amazon will kick off in the Los Angeles area before branching out.

Why Expand into Delivery?

Experts speculate that there are several reasons why Amazon is pursuing this new venture:

– Amazon’s lucrative Prime membership service offers free two-day shipping on specific items, but that perk is lost when customers order from a third-party supplier. By assuming more control, Amazon is hoping to drive additional customers to purchase a Prime membership.

– With the massive size of its operations, Amazon prefers to be as self-contained as possible. Taking charge of delivery service will minimize problems, such as delayed shipments during the last holiday season.

– Shipping causes a lot of red ink on Amazon’s books. In 2017, the company spent $20 billion getting orders to customers. That figure can be sharply reduced with in-house delivery.

– UPS recently reported quarterly revenues of $18.83 billion. Even for Amazon, it’s hard to resist the lure of that kind of money in their coffers.

Move Trailers with the Electric Yard Dog from DJ Products

Our battery-powered yard truck allows any employee to safely move trailers weighing up to 100,000 pounds. Call 800.686.2651 to learn more.

Should You Consider Cloud Services for Logistics Management?

Still using local software for logistics management? Cloud-based services have taken hold in this industry like so many others. Perhaps you like your current solution and live by the motto, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” On the other hand, sitting still can be dangerous. Logistics in the cloud can be more efficient and scalable—and perhaps surprisingly, also more secure.

Cloud services help you know exactly where your inventory is and where it needs to be. As the makers of TrailerCaddy yard dog trucks, we know how much agility and safety matter at a warehouse or distribution center and how they can benefit your bottom line. Terminal tractors keep each trailer positioned exactly where it needs to be.

Benefits of Cloud-Based Logistics Management

The experts at Inbound Logistics recently offered a rundown of why warehouse and transportation firms should be using cloud-based WMS or TMS for logistics:

– Reduced IT costs

– Scalable for growth or seasonal fluctuation

– Enhanced data security (more redundancy)

– Business continuity and backup disaster recovery

– Internet of Things for labels, tags, sensors, etc.

In practical terms, moving to the cloud means your data is always backed up. Services have a predictable monthly cost and software updates occur automatically. When technology changes, your cloud services provider will already be a step ahead. Cloud storage is a great way to improve distribution efficiency.

DJ Products Electric Yard Dog Trucks

What happens on the ground matters as much as what’s in the cloud. Our TrailerCaddy Terminal Tractors are high-performance, low-cost yard dog trucks that don’t require a CDL driver. Move any trailer up to 100,000 pounds with tight maneuvering and better safety.

Ask DJ Products how our yard dog trucks can improve logistics and supply chain management.

Tips for Helping Your Long Haul Drivers Manage Fatigue Enroute

Yard Trucks Can Lighten Loads for Drivers and Staff

Tired truckers are a huge problem. One that log books seek to prevent. However, like traffic rule books handed out to green drivers pre-licensure, log books are only as effective as those who follow their tenets. Luckily, CDL drivers can learn how to manage sleep without relying on them.

Get to Know Contributing Factors
Lack of oxygen, bright lights, noise and stress can all fuel fatigue, reducing the capacity to remain alert. While stress is tougher to tackle, oxygen is obvious and easy to address. Cool, fresh air is a fantastic fatigue-buster.

Monotonous, loud noise also has a prolonged fatiguing effect, making tasks difficult to perform. Luckily there’s fantastic tech these days, capable of providing both ear protection and entertainment.

Bright lights can seriously disrupt your concentration at night. Dim those interior lights and look at the fog line – and away from oncoming traffic.

Other Strategies for Managing Fatigue
From navigating yard trucks to planning a long-haul freight route, route planning will quickly show itself an ideal way to combat fatigue: Mapping routes and planning stops for rest in advance assures adequate down time, robbing your ego of “I’ll just try to make the next stop” syndrome and the dreaded ‘full’ rest stop.

Exercise tips from “Trucker Fitness” also don’t disappoint, helping you boost fatigue-busting endorphins and improving sleep quality. You cannot bank good sleep. Avoiding sleep debt/lousy rests actually safeguards sleep quality on-the-road. For those with the means, investing in a more comfortable sleeper unit can net amazing returns.

Are you protecting your employees from the fatigue and strain of shunting semi-trailers? Yard trucks can prevent muscle fatigue, injury, and other risks of moving heavy trailers. Safeguard against worker injury and boost productivity with the help of DJProducts today.

Trucking Contract Rate Trends for 2018 – Bigger Rate Increases in the Future

What’s in store for the transportation industry over the coming year? Get your semi truck tow dollies ready, because experts are predicting a “trucker’s market” in 2018.

Supply and Demand Continues to Tighten

Trucking analyst John Larkin of Stifel Nicolaus says that growing demand due to economy growth is being stretched by the shortage of drivers. While the lack of skilled blue-collar labor cuts across the entire economy, low pay scales are contributing to the specific difficulty in transportation.

According to Larkin, driver pay rates began to increase in the second half of 2017, but the base was so low that it will take several more raises to move the needle on the driver shortage. In addition, the Electronic Logging Devices (ELD) mandate was fully implemented as of December 17, which could further aggravate the situation.

Truckload Rates on the Rise

Another effect of the ELD mandate could be increases in truckload rates, which have already been rising. Larkin explains that it began with “an inflection” in spot rates during mid-2016, but the normal six-month lag time for contract rates ended up to be just over a year.

Less-than-truckload (LTL) rates have seen more modest increases recently, but that could change in the next 12 months. Between marketing automation, the growth of e-commerce, and overflow freight from truckload carriers, demand for LTL carriers is becoming greater.

Meet the Electric Yard Dog from DJ Products

With this anticipated scenario for 2018, the productivity of your trucking company needs to be on point. Visit our website and chat with our sales engineers to find out how semi truck tow dollies like our Electric Yard Dog are the solution to your efficiency and safety challenges.

The Made in America Supply Chain as a Top 2017 Trend

As technology continues to advance at lightning speed, changes in warehousing and logistics reflect new methods and products. What are today’s hot trends in the supply chain?

“Made in America”

Policies of the current administration are likely to result in decreases in trade with China and Mexico. Europe is facing a similar situation, but the slow pace of Brexit negotiations could delay a decline in trade between Great Britain and Europe.

Logistics Is Becoming Increasingly Automated

Driverless vehicles are still on the distant horizon, but robots are decreasing the need for warehouse workers. In a recent survey by ARC, 15 percent of warehouse executives said that autonomous robots are a priority in their three-year plan.

The current threshold is development of robots with arms that can function as order pickers. Once that issue is solved, the loss of warehouse jobs is expected to accelerate.

E-commerce Continues to Revolutionize Shipping

As online shopping became more popular, logistics struggled to keep up with increased volume, culminating in the holiday season of 2013 when an estimated two million packages were delivered late. Large 3PLs like DHL are meeting the opportunity with innovative solutions such as drones and crowdsourcing.

Digital Supply Chain

The Internet of Things has progressed to the more wide-ranging Digital Economy. Next is the concept of a supply chain control tower, where IoT data is turned into actionable tasks.

Warehousing and Logistics Solutions from DJ Products

Are you looking for ways to improve productivity without sacrificing safety? Visit our website and chat with one of our sales engineers for information about the CartCaddyShorty and other electric movers, tugs and pushers.

More Tips to Improve Warehouse Efficiency

Continuing our Monday post, today we provide more tips to ramp up warehouse efficiency by improving material handling processes in distribution centers. In a recent Supply Demand Chain article, TriFactor systems engineer Greg Tuohy offered these suggestions:

Re-evaluate pick tech. Eliminate paper-based picking in favor of auto-enhanced technology. Implementing radio frequency (RF), pick-to-voice or pick-to-light technology can make your operation more efficient. Evaluate the density of SKU locations, throughput, product characteristics and specialized procedures such as serial number tracking to determine the pick technology best suited to your operation, Tuohy advises.
Evaluate pick method. Decide which picking method is most cost effective for your operation. Piece picking where the picker walks the aisles picking and completing one order at a time is the most time-consuming and, therefore, most costly. Small, maneuverable powered tugs can facilitate far more efficient batch picking where all orders are picked simultaneously in a single pass. Dolly pullers and electric tugs can also be used to streamline operations that use assembly-line style zone and wave picking. Powered carts and tugs help streamline your operation by increasing the speed and volume of work that can be accomplished by each worker.
Multi-task. Practice task interleaving which combines picking with the put-away process, Tuohy suggests. Interleaving ensures that operators and equipment are always tasked, that time and energy are not wasted on empty loads. The idea is to create a continuous loop where equipment is always loaded, bringing materials to pick locations and returning empty pallets or delivering picked product to shipping locations.
Minimize downtime. Equipment requires planned maintenance. A proactive maintenance plan will minimize downtime and save time and money. Planned maintenance should be conducted on equipment and automated systems on a regular schedule. Correct small problems immediately and keep frequently needed spare parts on hand.
Protect power supply. Assess the vulnerability of your power supply. Lightning strikes, power outages and power spikes can wreak havoc with distribution systems, says Tuohy. Work with your local electric company to install surge protectors and other recommended protections. Battery-powered carts and tugs with enough juice to work through an entire shift can be the lifeline that keeps your operations moving when Mother Nature throws a fit.

Part 4: Why Businesses Fail

Financial experts seem to be teetering on the verge of labeling the country’s current economic situation a recession. It’s a label the government seems loathe to use, believing it will wreak further havoc on the stock market and send the economy spiraling down even further. No matter what you call it, things are difficult and it looks like they’re going to stay that way for a while. The economy is slow, credit is tight, fuel is high and bankruptcies are up. For many companies, the combination has delivered a knockout punch and they’re down for the count.

Last week we started a series on Why Businesses Fail (see our July 14-18 posts). We figure it’s better to learn from the mistakes of others than repeat them yourselves. This week we continue our list of the most likely reasons businesses fail:

Inappropriate inventory. You can’t sell what customers don’t want. Too much or the wrong inventory causes cash flow problems, wastes sales time and drains profits. By constantly tracking individual inventory items, you can make adjustments and effectively manage product flow on a weekly and monthly basis. Don’t make the mistake of relying strictly on accounting summaries to track inventory. Accounting tracks inventory by dollars, lumping moving and non-moving inventory into an average. To adequately control inventory, you need to track the actual physical items.
Excessive capital investments. Americans seem to equate success with things. Bigger cars, bigger houses, the latest gadgetry. In business there can be a tendency to buy newer, bigger, more expensive tools and equipment as a mark of success. But success in business is really based on the quality of the product or service you produce. That’s what drives sales and repeat business. Equipment purchases should relate to your ability to improve or maintain the quality of your product. Certainly, you need to update equipment as technology changes to be competitive. And often the expense of new technology can be recouped in short order by savings in energy, floor space or worker health and safety. But capital equipment purchases should always be evaluated for their ability to enhance the production of a quality product.

If you’re looking for a cost-saving solution for your capital equipment investment, turn to the material handling experts at DJ Products. At DJ Products we manufacture ergonomically designed electric carts and motorized cart pushers for business, industry and service providers like hospitals. Our products are smaller and more maneuverable than traditional powered equipment like fork trucks, walkies and riding tugs, yet are capable of moving the same sized loads with ease. A smart capital investment, our products are less costly than purchasing traditional powered equipment. Because our carts, tugs and equipment movers are ergonomically designed, you’ll also realize an attractive savings in worker health and safety costs, including medical bills, insurance payments, workers’ compensation and lost man-hours. Visit the DJ Products website to check out our full line of ergonomically designed electric and motorized carts.

To be continued

The Benefits of Our Dumpster Caddy

The difficult, labor-intensive task of moving waste containers poses a persistent issue for workplace productivity and cleanliness. From manufacturing plants to apartment complexes, businesses need a solution for quickly, efficiently moving dumpsters whenever necessary.

Dumpster caddies help facilitate this job for your employees while giving a boost to the quality of your work environment.

Here’s how ergonomic, battery-powered dumpster caddies impact your business:

Easier logistics. By making trash hauling easier with the dumpster caddy, businesses can enjoy greater freedom to arrange a warehouse or other facilities without worrying about carrying heavy loads over long distances. This means you can locate dumpsters where you want:

Locate dumpsters where needed, rather than near compactors or haul-away locations

Move dumpsters to different locations as needed

Work around awkward or difficult locations thanks to easy maneuvering

Fewer injuries. Loaded dumpsters typically weigh thousands of pounds and present an extremely difficult moving task without special equipment. With cart caddies designed to move your dumpsters, the burden shifts away from your employees and everyone enjoys a lower risk of injury. That means a better work environment, less financial risk, and a more productive workforce.

Less labor. Instead of using two or three employees to move a dumpster, the dumpster caddy only needs one person for safe, simple operation. This keeps more of your employees available and makes relocation possible for any trained staff member. Additionally, by taking away an unpleasant and hazardous task, you can retain good employees longer and get more out of your workers throughout the day.

For more info about dumpster caddy solutions for your business, call Team Cart Caddy at 800.686.2651 today.

Sustainability Takes “Green” to Next Level

Everyone is “going green” these days. Concern for the environment sparked “green” businesses, but skyrocketing fuel prices have ignited those efforts, pushing environmental practices ever more quickly toward sustainability.

What is sustainability? Sustainability takes environmentally-friendly practices to the next level. It improves upon the protection and husbandry of the world’s natural resources by utilizing processes that reclaim and reuse the products and byproducts of industry. Production comes full-circle: resources are used to create products which are then used and, at the end of their life cycle, recovered and reused to create new products. The ultimate goal of sustainability is to complete the cycle without creating unusable byproducts or waste and without polluting the environment.

Supply Chain Sustainability and Green Sustainable Supply Chain are the coming watchwords in the material handling and logistics industries, said Patrick Penfield of Syracuse University’s Whitman School of Management in a 2007 article for On the MHove, a MHIA publication. Growing concern over environmental pollution and dwindling natural resources are driving the push for sustainability. “Humankind has inherited a 3.8 billion per year store of natural capital. At present rates of use and degradation, there will be little left by the end of the next century,” authors of the book Natural Capitalism warned in 1999. Less than a decade later, scientists are concerned that the crisis point could be reached far sooner.

Despite the Bush administration’s failure to embrace global environmental efforts (and there are many valid arguments on both sides of that issue), European legislation restricting pollution and hazardous substances presage the future. Experts predict that the world will be unable to support its populace if the global community — including the U.S., China, Brazil, India and developing countries around the world — does not embrace environmental protection and work quickly to implement sustainable industry.

Next time: Supply Chain Sustainability

Tag: logistics