In the modern supply chain, there is a huge potential for the use of smart pallets – Internet of Things (IoT) technology enabled wood pallets that are capable of transmitting valuable data.  Already, some pallets carry sensors that can not only aid in geo-location but also track other environmental conditions or events including temperature, humidity, and shock. Many experts believe that such technologies will enable true transparency in the supply chain in terms of end to end visibility.

The role of pallets in communicating important information, however, is not a new one. They have always had things to tell us. Pallet stamps or colors can communicate information such as the pallet owner or a particular type of wood pallet (i.e. used to move chemicals).

In the case of ISPM 15, a stamp can also let global supply chain participants rest assured that the pallet meets international phytosanitary requirements. Pallet users, administrators and customs officials continue to benefit from information provided by wood pallet markings and colors.

By understanding pallet markings, even pallet craft enthusiasts and the general public can gain an appreciation of the crucial role of the pallet in global commerce.

Checking out a stack of empty pallets at a retailer location is a great way to grasp the international flavor of the food supply chain that services your local store.

ISPM 15 Pallet Markings

For example, watch for country codes on pallets from nations such as MX (Mexico), CR (Costa Rica), or AR (Argentina) that have brought fresh products from abroad. And at the tile and marble store, you are likely to see pallets from countries such as IT (Italy) or ES (Spain). Countries of origin are included as part of the ISPM 15 stamp. (a list of ISPM 15 country codes).

ISPM 15 markings certify that the wood pallets in question have been treated to prevent the international transmission of insect species that could decimate native flora and forests in the country of destination.

ISPM stamps are critical to stopping the spread of harmful insects, as well as in tracing back any non-compliance situations to the pallet supplier.

The ISPM 15 stamps provide useful information such as the certifying agency, the numeric code of the pallet producer, as well as the treatment method. HT signifies that the pallet or the wood used in assembling it has been heat treated in accordance with requirements. ISPM 15 stamps also include initials for the country of origin.

Wood Pallet Stamps and Brands

Pallet stamps or brands are also used for other purposes. They can signify different pallet models or sizes.  The CP (chemical) pallet pool, for example, includes nine different models (CP1 through CP9) to meet the various palletization needs of the industry.

They may also signify the pallet owner or pallet pool name. Pallets marked EPAL (European Pallet Association) are part of the world’s largest pallet pool. EPAL does not own EPAL pallets but rather, assures their quality.

Reusable pallet program administrators may require pallet supplier and production date information on pallets to help them monitor pallet quality and durability. Wood pallets may also include residual markings such as grade stamps from the lumber used to manufacture them.

Wood Pallet Color Meanings

You may also wonder about pallets painted a particular color. This approach is used by major pallet rental companies.  Aside from visual attractiveness for marketing purposes, color aids in the quick identification of pallets by material handling personnel when receiving pallets under load or selecting the appropriate pallet for load building.

Color is also useful for such tasks as taking physical inventory of pallets sitting at height in storage racks. Pallet users also employ color coded pallets to signal important information to pallet handlers about the pallet’s intended application.

While the future is brimming with potential for pallets and IoT, they can already tell us quite a bit. As a pallet user, are you utilizing markings to their full potential? It is a topic you could explore with your pallet provider.

But whether you use pallets or simply appreciate their role, the next time you pass a stack, take a moment to check them out for the specific markings discussed above. They have quite a story to share.

When effectively executed, pallet pooling is an approach to pallet management that can help promote pallet reuse and help save money for pallet users. It is also an environmental best practice that too often flies under the radar. That is rapidly changing, however, as pallet pooling providers are increasingly recognized as successful circular economy solutions.

Over 70 years since the emergence of pallet pooling, the concept is now celebrated as a circular economy (or sharing economy) best practice. This recognition comes at a time when companies are urgently pursuing strategies to reduce climate change impact, solid waste, and pollution. For many operators, pallet pooling will be a relatively straightforward solution that can help them gain momentum in their shift to circularity.

For those supply chains currently exploring or reassessing the opportunity for pooling, they can draw upon the experience of others. Pallet pooling first began with the U.S. military during the Second World War, when pallets were shared between supply plants.

In the decades that followed, several leading pallet pools were formed, including such notables as the europallet system (now EPAL) in Europe, the GPC (later GMA) pool in the United States, and the now-defunct Canadian Pallet Council (CPC) in Canada. Enduringly successful pooling providers also emerged in Australia in the years that followed World War 2.

Today, pallet pools play an important role in some supply chains, notably fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) supply chains.

Benefits of Pallet Pooling

Pallet pooling is a form of equipment pooling, itself a particular approach to equipment management. As in other forms of equipment pooling, pooled pallets are shared among participants. Companies ship pool pallets to other locations where they are reused or shipped empty to another pool participant or intermediary.

Pallet pooling offers several benefits to users. The reuse of pooled pallets helps to reduce the need to manufacture new pallets, generally resulting in a lower cost per trip than a single-use pallet. Additionally, they are typically designed with durability in mind. A modest increase in pallet cost can result in a generous payback in increased pallet life.

Quality assurance is another important feature of pallet pooling. Typically, there is a standard size or a range of standard sizes, and there will be a prescribed specification that new and repaired pallets are expected to meet.

By belonging to a pool, companies can enjoy the benefits of the pool’s quality assurance program to help promote safe material handling in their operations.

As mentioned above, pallet pooling supports circular economy aspirations through an emphasis on the sharing of long-lasting pallets that can be reused, repaired, re-manufactured, and when no longer usable; reduced to wood fiber for other applications. Such an approach helps to eliminate CO2 by avoiding the need to manufacture new pallets and the frequency of end-of-life pallet recycling.

Pallet Pooling Models

There are various approaches to pooling. In North America, two particularly visible examples in the FMCG sector are 3rd party rental and the GMA common pool.

Third-party rental (similar to pallet hire in other parts of the world) providers rent pallets to users, typically on a per-use basis. Pallet rental is dominated by a handful of large companies that require massive pallet inventories and a large retrieval network.

There are also smaller rental providers, however, that provide custom solutions to less complex supply chains featuring fewer “ship-to” locations. Rental participants can benefit by enjoying the use of a premium quality pallet at a lower cost than purchasing a new pallet. Providers provide mechanisms to remove unneeded empty pallets after they have been unloaded.

Another leading model is the common pool. It features a commonly accepted standard, but without formal oversight or management at the pool level.

In the case of the GMA or 48×40”, refurbished pallets are readily available in the marketplace. While quality assurance is not officially regulated, the competitive nature of the marketplace requires attention to a general consensus of quality assurance standards.

One bonus of the common pool is that participants are less restricted as to where the pallets can be shipped. Additionally, a ready demand for accumulations of empty pallets exists in most markets to alleviate empty pallet accumulation.

There are other models. In many instances, companies have their own pallet inventories that are shared among company locations and regular trading partners. These may be managed by the company owning the pallets, or through a third-party management service.

Another type of model, more prominent in Europe, is the industry cooperative approach. In the cooperative approach, pallets are generally owned by an industry-supported not-for-profit to provide pallets to industry participants.

There is also a third-party association regulatory approach, such as provided by EPAL. The regulatory group creates specifications for the manufacture and repair of pallets. The pallets are owned by participants, however, who are free to transfer ownership to trading partners or exchange, according to their needs.

These are just examples of pooling models, and the list is by no means exhaustive. Some supply chains will require unique variations to provide the best solution in terms of value, quality assurance and environmental gains for their particular needs.

Pooling, however, is widely practiced in a variety of ways, and a circular solution to your pallet requirements might be closer at hand than you might imagine. Why not contact an NWPCA, CWPCA or WPA member company today to explore how pallet pooling could work in concert with your company’s strategic aspirations.

Pallet Recycling Equipment Trends

As the recycled pallet sector continues to evolve, it finds itself facing new challenges such as the deterioration of pallet pool quality, the need for higher throughput, and labor availability constraints. Increasingly, however, creative machinery providers are helping recycled pallet business operators to clear these hurdles and others. Here is what’s trending.

From work cells to integrated production systems

The legacy approach to wood pallet recycling revolved around each process as a separate work cell. Sorting, dismantling, board trimming, and repair tables all ran as stand-alone activities, requiring a lot of manual stacking and unstacking activity as well as forklift movement of material between workstations. For several reasons, the cell approach no longer makes sense.

Consider that hiring good people has become challenging. Automation helps to increase productivity by reducing handling labor inherent in the work cell approach. Design improvements such as conveyors and tippers result in improved ergonomics, and the systems approach helps keep potentially dangerous forklift activity away from workstations.

By boosting productivity, automation reduces the need to add more staff as businesses grow. Finally, many recycling operations are getting larger over time, and are therefore in a better position to invest in such equipment and reap the benefit of it.

“We see a lot more system integration with multiple machines, and conveyance all being designed as a system so that you gain more efficiencies,” one leading provider of pallet recycling equipment commented to Nature’s Packaging. “Our customers are asking for system design.”

Equipment that facilitates more efficient re-manufacturing

An ongoing concern has been the gradual deterioration of used pallet or pallet core quality. As one recycled pallet sales executive recently observed, “While 70 to 80% of recycled pallets were repairable in the past, now the number is more like 60 to 70%, with most of those being lower grade pallets rather than the Premium grade wood pallets that many customers prefer,” he said.

With fewer repairable pallets, recycling has become much more than simply slapping a board or two onto a pallet and shipping it out the door to a customer. The importance of pallet re-manufacturing continues to grow.

Pallet re-manufacturing involves the production of new pallets from recycled components. This process has been largely manual – the variability of reclaimed material sizing can pose a problem for automated nailing systems.

Increasingly, however, automated equipment is being designed with remanufacturing in mind. There are two approaches. One is machinery designed for the automated nailing of variable thickness and width boards. The other is automation designed around reducing variability.

Let us consider the former approach first. Nailing machines are now available that can facilitate the nailing of random width and variable thickness boards on stringers, thanks to bars that apply pressure from the top to hold the boards down while they are being nailed to stringers.

The latter approach involves automation to eliminate variability. This challenge can now be addressed through automated scanning that can identify the geometry or the dimensions of boards, and sort them accordingly.

More uniformly sized material will make it better suited for pallet nailing systems. Such systems may include trim optimization to cut off the bad end and trim to the desired length. Given the considerable amount of jobs typically involved in sorting and trimming boards in pallet recycling operations, such systems have the potential to significantly enhance productivity while improving lumber recovery.

The other approach to reducing lumber variability is through resizing it. Some pallet companies currently resize recycled wood pallet stringers to make their height uniform. One equipment provider is currently developing a machine that will perform as a combination planer and edger, to reduce the size of boards on two or three sides to give them a uniform profile.

Old nails will be pulled out or cut smooth to the wood surface, while the planing/cutting action will also remove weathered wood to produce bright, clean boards that will give re-manufactured pallets more of a “new pallet” look.

Automated pallet inspection, robotics and more

Some high-volume recycled wood pallet inspection systems have installed automatic digital inspection or ADI systems in recent years. The use of high definition cameras and laser sensors can determine the dimensions of a pallet and identify whether a pallet has structural damage requiring repair.

Robots are being seen in recycling systems for activities such as pallet sorting, and to a lesser extent, for repair. One exciting application is regarding robots to feed pallets through a band dismantler, thereby eliminating the most physically demanding job in many pallet recycling plants.

Some of these approaches are still in the early stages of adoption, and it remains to be seen which ones will leave their mark on the industry. If there is one certainty, however, it is that new solutions resulting from research and development by industry suppliers remain critical to the industry’s continued success.

ERP Solutions Help Pallet Companies Evolve

Products and technologies come and go; it’s the relentless march of progress. Think about products like the Sony Walkman or the VHS player. Wildly successful for a moment in history, but ultimately, each one was replaced by a better mousetrap (so far).

Then we have the enduring wooden pallet. To the average observer, the pallets of today don’t look much different than the ones that were stacked up beside the neighborhood Blockbuster Video 20 years ago. The thing that has changed, however, is the wooden pallet industry itself.

The pallet business has become increasingly complex, technology-enabled, and relentlessly customer-focused. One technology, in particular, is helping more and more operators to successfully manage that complexity, and that’s ERP – Enterprise Resource Planning software. Let’s take a closer look.

What is ERP Software?

ERP is an acronym for Enterprise Resource Planning, but it is a name that doesn’t offer much insight into what ERP is, and why it is being increasingly embraced by successful pallet companies.

Consider all of the essential processes in operating a manufacturing business, such as inventory and order management, human resources, accounting, and customer relationship management.

Simply stated, ERP is the “brain” that integrates these various activities into one complete system. As a result, information is shared across the entire organization, and processes are streamlined.

Does your business need ERP, and how can it help?

There are telltale signs that your business could be ready to consider an ERP solution. Here are some common ones:

Your business is expanding

If your business is growing, then you just might be an ERP candidate. According to one ERP provider, the leading reason companies show interest is that they have outgrown their existing applications. As the business expands and data volume increases, entry-level software applications may reach critical overload.

ERP software, on the other hand, is designed to store large amounts of data from across the various business functions. Additionally, ERPs are scalable, providing the flexibility to keep pace with your future growth.

Frustrated with duplicate data entry and “pen and paper”

If you are tediously shuffling paperwork and manually entering information, there is a more profitable way to spend your time. “It’s strange to see an industry as big as the pallet industry still using Excel, paper and QuickBooks to run its operations,” one pallet industry ERP provider stated to Nature’s Packaging, “especially the smaller and mid-sized companies of less than 100 employees.”

Because information is only entered a single time into an ERP system, much, if not all, of duplicate processes are eliminated. Even the smallest companies can benefit from an ERP system. Some ERP providers offer a free simple version with limited use.

Meeting customer demands is becoming more difficult

Without a robust ERP, it can be difficult to maintain a high level of timely customer service. With no visibility, the salesperson has to walk into the plant or place a call to find out the status of a particular order. Meanwhile, pallet builders might be working with incomplete instructions, increasing the likelihood of error. In manual systems, order details can be missed or left as assumptions.

With an ERP, however, the manufacturing team can look back at the original order as entered by the sales team. And conversely, sales can easily check the system to verify order status. Pallet companies using ERP stress the value of enterprise-wide visibility of information. Accurate inventory, cost and order file information allows companies to quote with greater clarity and speed.

Your employees expect it

Of course, there is one more important reason to consider investing in ERP, and that’s because employees will increasingly demand it. “As the younger generation comes into the business, they understand the benefits of an ERP system and are much more motivated to have it available to them, the ERP vendor said. “They don’t want to work with paper and Excel. They want to work from their cell phone.”

ERP software is a powerful tool. Beginning with a sales order, it can create production and shipping schedules. It can track production costs, inventory, employee time and production. It can integrate with various accounting programs, and supports integration with programs for drawing or designing pallets such as PDS.

While there are many ERP system providers in the marketplace, there are some that specialize in the wooden pallet and forest products sector. Choosing an industry-specific solution will help minimize the amount of costly and time-consuming customization required prior to installation. And choose a solution that provides ease of use and ready integration with other software.

While the Sony Walkman cassette player is now a museum piece, the wooden pallet continues to play a pivotal role in today’s evolving supply chain. In the background, technology solutions such as ERP software are helping pallet companies keep pace with change and deliver greater value than ever to customers.

The Dynamic Warehouse Duo

It seems like the pallet and the forklift have always been part of shipping and logistics in the modern world. For 70 years, this dynamic duo has delivered the goods for a growing global economy. While they have served us faithfully, changes in technology are coming fast.

The forklift is no longer the lift truck that Rosie the Riveter drove during World War 2. The venerable material handling mainstay is having a moment among warehouse technologies. New power sources, such as lithium-ion and sealed lead-acid batteries, help promote uptime and reduce maintenance. Meanwhile, the availability of telematics technology for forklifts allows businesses to collect and analyze usage data with an eye toward continuous improvement.

Automated Forklift Technologies

Consider that driver wages to operate a forklift two or three shifts daily can vastly exceed the cost of the forklift and maintenance. As one vendor pointed out, think about the financial impact of running that forklift on three shifts at $50,000 per shift/year. That is $150,000 per year in wages for one forklift! Self-driving forklifts have the potential to help companies reduce costs and ease staffing pressure while increasing productivity and safety.

Several major forklift providers now offer automated options, and the segment is pegged to grow. The automated forklift market is projected to reach $12 billion in sales by 2027, carving out close to a 15% share of the $81.4 billion global forklift market.

In 2019, Amazon raised eyebrows when it made a deal with Balyo, a France-based autonomous technology supplier. The agreement allowed it to acquire 29% of Balyo if it purchases $340 million worth of forklifts featuring the Balyo technology over a seven-year term. Some automation technologies are more sensitive to pallet quality than others, so we would do well to consider the impact of automated forklifts on pallet requirements for fulfillment centers and plant operations. It is something that pallet providers and operations managers alike will wish to know. Will the pallet have to change in keeping pace with the forklift, now seemingly amid a full-blown makeover?

Challenges in the supply chain

The first thing to consider is that variability is often a challenge for automated systems. For applications such as automated storage and retrieval systems (AS/RS) or shuttles, wood pallets that vary in height or specification, even slightly, can cause jams and downtime.

The requirements for mobile robotic lift trucks are not as demanding, yet still require a degree of uniformity. While a human operator can spot a damaged or non-conforming pallet and resolve the issue, such is not the case with automated forklifts.

As mentioned, pallet variability due to pallet specification or because of damage can cause performance issues with automated forklifts as well. “The biggest challenge with mobile robotic lift trucks is variability,” one forklift executive told Pallet Enterprise last year. He noted that variability-related hurdles could extend to floor condition and other aspects of the warehouse environment, including unwelcome surprises involving the pallet/load engagement. “As such, pallets have a substantial impact on the success of any mobile robotic lift truck application,” he said.

Another vendor recommended using highly durable alternative material pallets but was quick to add that automated lift trucks can work with wood pallets as well, but that “worn, broken or bowing” characteristics in pallets can be problematic.

“As robotics continue to penetrate deeper in the conventional lift truck market, the consistency of GMA pallets and the consistency of any GMA #2 pallets will be increasingly rigorous,” the forklift executive continued. “This drives customers and suppliers towards a more stringent definition of what an acceptable pallet is in a system with robotic equipment.”

With continued investment in automation in general, consistent pallet quality will be increasingly important. The good news is that many companies already have pallet quality assurance processes in place, and those operations will be in good shape to adopt automated technology. The best wood pallet for the job will continue to be one that is managed to ensure reliable performance. The dynamic duo of wood pallet and forklift seems poised to continue their partnership, even as supply chain technologies evolve.