John Deere: Tracking Reusable Packaging in a Global Assembly Manufacturing Supply Chain

To effec­tively man­age John Deere’s reverse logis­tics, it has devel­oped a sophis­ti­cated and inte­grated track­ing sys­tem through­out its global sup­ply chain. Deere’s 1,500,000 reusable con­tain­ers each have some sort of track­ing tag affixed to them and are tracked through an internet-based track­ing sys­tem. An abil­ity to track con­tainer assets is essen­tial to effec­tively man­ag­ing a global net­work where con­tain­ers are con­stantly mov­ing some­where 24 hours a day. With­out a track­ing sys­tem, the prob­a­bil­ity of shrink­age increases as geog­ra­phy expands, to the point that it under­mines the finan­cial via­bil­ity of invest­ing in reusable con­tain­ers. An inte­grated tracking/management sys­tem pro­vides the strongest and best value propo­si­tion by har­vest­ing numer­ous ben­e­fits from the same infrastructure. Read more at reusables.org.