The thud you heard was me falling off my chair. I was reading an article about an award winning initiative called the Physical Internet Initiative (http://physicalinternetinitiative.org/), which in part calls for the elimination of pallets in an effort to improve supply chain efficiency. And here we’ve long been told that the combination of pallets and unit load handling was one of the greatest logistical achievements of the 20th Century, allowing for huge efficiencies in material handling. Otherwise people wouldn’t be using them by the billions, right?
Read more at Pallet Enterprise.
Thanks for the thought-provoking piece in Pallet Enterprise. While it may be a bit unrealistic to speak of a complete shift away from pallets, the Physical Internet is an innovative concept and a reminder that massive shifts in efficiency, waste, and productivity may more likely result from periodically taking a step back and rethinking the entire system than from incremental improvements to the status quo.
Rick, thanks for this perspective that is a change from the plastic or wood pallet discussion.
Good to talk about theory, great to start implementing few steps of this vision.
We have designed a new pallet system where the pallet does not travel, only the goods. No more full trucks of empty pallets. No more pallet loss conflicts. Better, greener and altogether cheaper. (Powerpoint presentation on request.)
We would be pleased to contribute one step of this physical Internet !
Wonderful, what a webpage it is! This web
site gives helpful information to us, keep it up.