How to Improve Efficiency During The Food Supply Chain Process?

The food supply chain is fraught with one major peril, decomposition. Foods that exceed their expiry dates are a loss for the company. This underlines the importance of having procedures in place to safeguard the food and speed up deliveries in the food supply chain. 3PL partners in charge of a food supply chain need to implement best practices and good procedures to ensure that the goods are delivered to the right port within the right time.

Ways for safeguarding your food products during supply chain process:

Implement FIFO

FIFO, short for first-in and first-out, is an invaluable principle in supply chains dealing with food. Implementation of FIFO stock rotation policies ensures that the food remains fresh. Under this principle, the stocks that arrive first at the warehouse storage facility will be the stocks that are first to leave when the order comes in. As a result, the stocks sent out will still be fresh with enough time to go.

Increase Speed

There can be several areas in the order fulfillment process which consumes a lot of time. Bottlenecks might be another issue. It is essential that these areas and issues are identified as quickly as possible. Once identified, the proper fixes and procedures should be implemented. Faster means of transport should be chosen wherever possible. Speeding up the order fulfillment process will reduce the likelihood of delivering foods that have gone bad.

Utilize Inventory Positioning

The position of the stocks in the storage warehouse can greatly impact the speed with which orders are fulfilled. Multilevel storage racks are certainly a benefit. However, they should be supported by tools and equipment that make it easy to access the goods for order fulfillment. The position of the inventory within the warehouse needs to be chosen with care as well.

Implement IoT

IoT involves the use of sensors and other technologies to gather data. These sensors can be fitted into the freight boxes and storage areas to monitor the temperature and other aspects of the food products during food supply chain process. Sensors can also be attached to the storage units, racks, and pallets.

This way, it becomes extremely easy to know where each product is located as well as the condition it is in. Foods rapidly approaching their expiry dates can be quickly brought to the forefront and dispatched. Special care procedures can be implemented for those foods which are losing their freshness. This is useful even when the freight is in the move. Sensors can keep track of the goods throughout the supply chain.

Control the Temperature

Temperature is easily the most important aspect of storing food products during the food supply chain. All food products must be maintained at the right temperature to preserve their freshness. As such, the warehouse must have proper refrigeration and temperature control technologies in place. The temperature must be regulated during transport as well.

3PL companies like 20Cube place special emphasis on the care given to the freight as it moves through the supply chain. This is applicable to food freight as well.