Optimizing the world’s supply chains. Yesterday, today, tomorrow.

Consumer goods companies and their retail partners around the globe are re-thinking the meaning of supply chain optimization. Vishal Patell, who leads the Marketing and Strategic Planning function for CHEP in North America, shares his insights on the state of supply chain optimization.

Q: Thank you, Vishal. For starters, every company has their own take on supply chain optimization. When you hear the phrase, what does it mean to you?

Supply chains used to be linear. Now they’re circular. If you’re not thinking circular supply chains, and you're not applying your optimization principles to reduce the impact on this planet, then you're not doing your job right. It's not end-to-end anymore. It's start-to-start.

What exactly makes a supply chain circular?

Human beings use natural resources from the Earth. As we do so, we must make sure that whatever is left over is responsibly reused or put back in the Earth as compost, not thrown away in a manner that pollutes the Earth and environment.

Your company supplies solutions to hundreds of thousands of supply chains. Who exactly are your customers?

Companies that make life's essential goods, so pretty much anyone that makes consumer products; fresh produce, packaged foods, general merchandise. And also, the companies that are selling those goods.

How would you articulate what you do for them?

Our pallets, crates, and containers form the invisible backbone of domestic and global supply chains. We help customers efficiently move products through the supply chain from raw materials to consumer, and we do that in more places, with more products, to more people, than any other organization on Earth.

You've personally helped optimize supply chains in three of the world's biggest economies; The United States, India, and China. How do their supply chains differ and where is each country focused today?

In the U.S., the problem is not that we don't have enough roads to move goods, it’s that we don't have enough drivers to drive our trucks, so our innovation efforts target things such as driverless vehicles.

In China, it's getting there. They're starting to build the infrastructure, and labor is starting to catch up, so they're well on their way to modernizing.

In India, labor is still extremely cheap, so they do things completely differently and that means different things for us as a company.

I found it interesting that pallets are the foundation of standardization in an emerging supply chain, which is so essential to eliminating inefficiencies and waste.  

Yes, standardization is huge in creating a more advanced supply chain. Imagine if we didn't have the 40-foot or 20-foot ocean container – how ocean shipping might look today. Brambles invests a lot in creating that standard unit load, driving standardization, and helping emerging economies make the forward progress towards modernizing their supply chains.

Are there any areas of improvement within emerging supply chains that you are more interested in personally?

In the U.S. ~40% of the food that's produced is wasted, but most at the end of its life. In emerging economies, there’s an equal amount of waste, but that's post-harvest due to a lack of technology. So, how to apply technology to improve the post-harvest process or the post-production process.

Can you provide an example?

Brambles has done trials in South Africa with bananas, putting digitized devices into single-use packaging and into the reusable plastic bin solution. Then we monitored factors like temperature and airflow as the bananas moved from grower to retailer.

In the industrial world and well-established supply chains, what are you seeing companies most focused on improving today?

The fundamental thing is “how do I get my goods in front of the consumer at the right time and at the lowest possible cost?” It’s about on-shelf availability if you're shopping in the store, and just availability if the consumer's buying the product online. The other thing I’m seeing is the whole digital aspect of how we are going to weave in the tracking and tracing of products as they move through the supply chain.

Are you are seeing any “optimization trends” or experimentation starting to emerge that is different than where the main focus is today?

Blockchain and how we can use that technology to create further advances in the supply chain. Another thing is if a smart pallet or container can provide information to companies in real-time on their products that are falling out of compliance, of say temperature guidelines, or time guidelines, or expiration dates.

What is Brambles doing to help supply chains integrate new technologies?

In the Internet of Things, Brambles has its own technology outfit in Silicon Valley called BXB Digital. They figure out how we can make our assets smarter, add value not only to our own business and our operating processes, but more importantly, to customers by providing this much-needed visibility of goods as they flow across the supply chain.

Looking back to before you joined the organization, what would you like people to know about a career with Brambles optimizing supply chains?

When you look for careers in supply-chain optimization, Brambles is unique. I don't think there's many companies in the world where you can help thousands of supply chains or get as broad of a view as you can in this business. And Brambles is a company where, if you want, you can never stop learning.