Scoutwise grew out of Extera’s own need to keep tabs on reusable assets. The result is an asset tracking platform built from the container business outward, rather than the software business inward.
One of the great promises of reusable packaging is that you get to use the package again. There is just one small catch. You have to get it back.
Anyone who has managed reusable pallets, totes, or bulk containers knows how quickly the math can unravel when assets linger at customer locations, disappear into another plant or simply become difficult to account for. A container engineered for dozens or even hundreds of trips does not deliver much of a return if you lose track of it early in its working life.
That issue came up repeatedly when I spoke recently with Stacey Cremers, a partner at Scoutwise who has also spent almost 20 years with Extera, its partner company. At one point, our conversation drifted to the much less glamorous problem of trying to find things inside a large facility. I remembered walking plenty of miles earlier in my career looking for misplaced pallets, dunnage and product in a 500,000-square-foot warehouse. Cremers laughed and pointed out that reusable asset visibility does not have to begin when something leaves the building. Sometimes the missing container is still somewhere inside.
That practical view of asset tracking helps explain why Scoutwise was created. Extera has been leasing reusable containers since 1991, initially serving the rubber compounding industry. Over time, the family-owned business expanded into container sales, repair, recycling and other services, and today manages about 30,000 leased assets, according to Cremers. Its current offering includes reusable bulk containers and plastic pallets along with leasing, repair, recycling, grinding and plastic compounding services.
Tracking those leased assets was already part of doing business. The problem came when Extera went looking for a better system.
“We didn’t start as a software company,” Cremers told me. “We started as a container company, and we developed the software to fit a need.”
About five years ago, Extera began investigating alternatives to the tracking system it had been using. Cremers said the available platforms could be highly customizable, but the cost and complexity were difficult to justify for a small or medium-sized company. Rather than abandon the idea, the company decided to build its own solution. Development eventually led to Scoutwise, which was officially launched last year.
That origin is noteworthy. There is no shortage of sophisticated asset tracking technology in the marketplace. What Scoutwise brings to the discussion is a platform developed by a company that was already dealing with the everyday realities of reusable packaging, including asset loss, return cycles, repairs and replacement purchases.
Reusability needs visibility
Cremers summed up the connection in three words: “Reusability needs visibility.”
It sounds obvious, but the implications go beyond simply knowing whether a container came back. Customers may be circulating assets among five or six plants, for example. Knowing which location has empty containers, which units are carrying product and how long assets have been sitting can affect production scheduling and the number of additional containers a company thinks it needs to buy.
During our conversation, Cremers walked me through the Scoutwise dashboard. Users can see where assets were last scanned, how long they have been at a location, and which containers have exceeded a desired return period. A customer wanting assets returned within 120 days, for example, can flag overdue units. Reporting, user and location management, bills of lading and other functions can also be incorporated. Scoutwise says its platform provides centralized dashboards, asset history and reporting across barcode, RFID and Bluetooth Low Energy, or BLE, tracking technologies.
The choice of technology depends on the application. Barcode offers a relatively simple entry point where someone is already scanning assets as part of the workflow. RFID can capture large numbers of tagged items without line-of-sight scanning, although Cremers noted that the infrastructure investment can make it less attractive for companies that do not already have RFID in place.
BLE opens another possibility. Rather than only recording that an asset passed a particular scan point, Bluetooth tags can help locate assets within a facility. Scoutwise describes BLE as an option for indoor visibility and proximity tracking. Cremers said the company is continuing to work with technology partners on broader location capabilities, including cellular, GPS and satellite-based approaches.
That brought our conversation back to those long walks through the warehouse. A reusable container does not have to be hundreds of miles away to be effectively lost. It can be in the wrong production zone, sitting in a trailer in the yard or buried among other equipment on the opposite side of the plant.
“People don’t even think about that as an option, to have visibility within your own plant,” Cremers said.
When replacement becomes a line item
Asset tracking has long faced an adoption hurdle because companies assume the technology will cost more than the assets they are trying to protect. For inexpensive packaging, that calculation may still be entirely reasonable. Spending several dollars a month to track a $5 item probably may not make much sense.
The equation looks different when reusable assets cost hundreds of dollars each and disappear in meaningful numbers. Cremers pointed to Extera customers purchasing substantial quantities of replacement containers month after month due to not having adequate visibility into where their existing inventory has gone. In one case, she said replacement purchases were running around $30,000 per month.
“When you start capitalizing that and recognizing, wow, we’re throwing a lot of money out the window, we spent a little bit and had some visibility, we would be able to really reduce that capital expense,” she said.
There is another piece of the calculation that can be easy to overlook. The value at risk is not necessarily limited to the pallet or container. A $300 reusable container might be carrying several thousand dollars of components, chemicals or other material. Knowing where the unit load is located can be considerably more valuable than simply protecting the packaging investment.
Affordability was one of the reasons Extera decided to develop its own system. Cremers said the company encountered substantial implementation charges when it researched commercial platforms, along with recurring fees and contract commitments. Scoutwise was designed with lower onboarding costs and a month-to-month approach. Its website currently emphasizes no long-term contracts as part of that positioning.
Cremers sees that accessibility as particularly important for smaller companies, which increasingly want the same kind of operational visibility available to much larger organizations.
“Small and medium-sized companies get shut down in so many ways because they can’t afford what the big guys have,” she said. “We want to level that playing field with Scoutwise.”
The Scoutwise platform has since moved beyond Extera’s own container fleet. It is offered independently to companies across North America and can be applied to pallets, containers, equipment and other assets that can accommodate an appropriate tag or identifier. The system can also be connected through APIs to existing ERP and other business software, according to Cremers.
For Extera, however, the relationship between the two businesses remains particularly interesting. The company sells and leases reusable assets, repairs them to extend their useful life and recycles the material when they can no longer remain in service. Scoutwise adds visibility while those assets are moving through the supply chain.
It is one thing to specify a reusable package capable of making 100 trips. The harder part can be making sure it is still around for trip number 100.
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Rick LeBlanc, EMBA, is the founder and editor of Reusable Packaging News (subscribe to the free newsletter) and editor of Western Pallet Magazine. A supply chain journalist with more than 30 years of experience, he specializes in pallets, reusable packaging, material handling and related operations. Rick is co-author of Pallets: A North American Perspective and Pallets & Progress: A Collected History of Pallets and Palletized Handling 1922–1945. He is also an advisory board member of the Virginia Tech Center for Packaging and Unit Load Design. Read Rick’s full bio.
