FAST-FOOD ORDERING

The queues management has changed greatly in the last few years, hand in hand with new technologies. For example, nowadays it is not unusual to find a hypermarket or a department store incorporating single queue solution. The most common are the notifications through a sound device or a screen. But, how do the fast-food chains do to manage the queues in their establishments?

The main trend in the fast-food restaurants is the use of self-order kiosks. These kiosks allow the customers to interact with a touchscreen to choose the menu or the set of foods or beverages that they desire to take. Once the client takes a decision, pays automatically with a credit or debit card, receiving a ticket as a physical evidence of the purchase. Additionally, the fast-food restaurants have established a special queue for this kind of orders, speeding up the delivery process.

McDonald’s is using this system since a couple of years, as you can watch in this short video about a half minute.

However, this is not the only fast food chain using this interactive system, also companies as Domino’s Pizza or MAX, the famous Sweden burger restaurant, have incorporated this technology in order to improve customer experience.

In addition, the fast-food companies are implementing mobile ordering systems, thus the clients can order a hamburger in advance, go to the restaurant and pick up the product without waiting.

The main advantages of the use of this technology are:

• Improvement of customer experience.
• The possibility of forecast the demand in advance (mobile ordering).
• Reduction of queues.
• Saving of time
• Increasement of the convenience.

AMAZON LOCKER EXPERIENCE

 

How many of you had a bad experience with a delivery company? Maybe because you were waiting for a long time due to the deliveryman was delayed.  In order to improve the customer experience, the companies take advantage of this fact stablishing a new service for collecting orders, the installation of collecting points in strategic positions of the cities.

Amazon is one of these firms, concretely its new service is named Amazon Locker Service and according to them you can receive orders at secure locations. Concretely, during the purchase process the client can choose the delivering in a specific Amazon Locker with no additional cost.

The process as simple as this, the client inserts the code sent to you by email or scans the bar code given, then a door is opened and he/she picks the package. You can watch the video explanation of Amazon below.

Additionally, this picking places can be useful when you want to return your product making comfortable this arduous task.

However, there are a lot of companies using similar services as Correos or UPS as you can see in the pictures attached. However, the only disadvantage I have to say is this service usually is only available for small packages.

Concluding, this new service can improve the costumer experience of purchasing online because can reduce the clients awareness of order received. In addition, the delivery companies reduce the spending time to deliver packages concentrating a few in the same location.

HUMANITARIAN LOGISTICS

The number of humanitarian emergencies have growth largely during the last decade derived from natural disasters or conflicts developed by the human being. It is difficult not to think about the Haiti earthquake in 2010 and the Japan earthquake and tsunami in 2011.

When a humanitarian crisis occurs, different humanitarian organizations, like ONGs and cooperation public agencies, work to supply affected locations with basic necessity items and helping in the reconstruction of the places. The organizations must manage a huge quantity of human resources, materials and information between the damaged location and the rest of the world. Thus, the logistics is fundamental in these cases.

• To manage the flow of materials and human resources: A huge number of deliveries of different types is produced (food, medicines, machines, vehicles and unsolicited). Additionally, it is important to consider that sometimes unsolicited supplies generate problems because they waste time and storage space needed for urgent supplies.
• To manage the flow of information: It is necessary to analyse the problem in situ in order to stablish the potential needs and what the surface damages are. This is done to design a supply chain and implement it to know which resources the location needs and which information supply to the society.
• To manage the financial flow: It is important to get liquidity rapidly in order to respond immediately to the disaster. Donations made are not received at the moment, sometimes they need months to get to the final destination. There are organizations that provide the emergency funds anticipating to the real emergencies.

REVERSE LOGISTICS: SIGRE

The reverse logistics is increasingly more present in the business world driven by the cost reduction involved and the environmental consciousness.

Concretely, the Reverse Logistics, according to the Council of Logistics Management, is “The process of planning, implementing and controlling the efficient, cost-effective flow of raw materials, in-process inventory, finished goods and related information from the point of consumption to the point of origin for the purpose of recapturing value or proper disposal”

Our partners from previous years developed this topic in depth, I suggest you to take a look at their post in order to know more about Reverse Logistics and its advantages, click and click.

The purpose of this post is to introduce the reader to SIGRE, a Spanish non-profit organization that uses a reverse logistics system to guarantee the correct environmental management of domestic medicines and its packaging. The pharmaceutical laboratories launched it in 2011 with the participation of pharmacies and companies of pharma distribution.

Specifically, the process works as follow:

1. Any individual that possess an expired medicine, drugs that already are not use or empty medicine packaging or with remains goes to the pharmacy.
2. The pharmaceutical explains where is the SIGRE point inside the pharmacy.
3. The individual deposit them in the SIGRE point.
4. The pharma distributors take advantage of their visits to supply medicines to also pick up the medicine of packaging deposited in the point SIGRE of each pharmacy.

   

5. In the packaging and waste medicine plant, the remains are recycled, used as a fuel in industrial processes and destroyed when they are dangerous.

Through this system, the organization accomplishes two big goals:

• Environmental: reduces the damage caused by the industry processes to the environment thanks to the recycling of remains, thus protecting and preserving it.
• Medical: makes awareness about the derived risks of the inappropriate use of pharma medicines.

Source:
http://www.sigre.es/

The Hyperloop: the future of transportation

Historically, the progress in transportation has been hampered by the difficulties to manage friction and air resistance, having into account that both factors increase considerably with velocity.

These obstacles are defeated thanks to a new transportation prototype that is seeking to attain the incredible speed of 1200 km/h becoming the fastest mode of transport in the world. We are talking about the Hyperloop.

How the hyperloop works?

Basically, the concept created by Elon Musk consists on a vacuum tube with low pressure air where the capsules carrying passengers or freights would be pushed along by a series of electromagnets.

The next interesting video of only 2 minutes admirably explains how the hyperloop technology works.

Advantages of hyperloop for freight transport

• Rapidity: the hyperloop can connect LA with San Francisco in just 30 minutes while the drive between these cities is six to eight hours.
• Cheaper for the customer: this technology is a self-sufficient system reducing this way the costs and reducing at the same time the cost for the customer.
• Arrival more frequently: Hyperloop pods are expected to arrive every 30 to 120 seconds.
• Reduction of pollution: thanks to its powered with solar panels instead of fossil fuels.
• Avoid the waiting cost for traffic jams.
• Immune to weather (wind, ice fog, rain and so on)
• Resistant to earthquakes
• Safer

These advantages suppose great improvements for the logistics, like the possibility of sending pallets and containers on-demand, the getting of a better communication between the different actors of the supply chain and a sustainable supply chain.

In the video bellow, you can watch some of the advantages pointed.

Curiosity

Our colleagues from the Polytechnic University of Valencia won the last year the prestigious Hyperloop Pod competition sponsored by SpaceX, obtaining the Top Design Concept Award and Propulsion/Compression Subsystem Technical Excellence Award.

I suggest you that you watch this last video in order to know more about their beautiful history.

RFID technology in ZARA

After the last logistics lecture, the RFID technology came to my mind, though that is a good idea to get deeper in this topic in order to show how a big company like Zara uses this system.

Before starting to explain how Zara makes profit from this technology and the advantages that it provides, I recommend you to visit the post where our partners explained how the RFID exactly works  and an overview of the logistics of the Inditex group

Inditex started using this technology in Zara, getting the total implantation in 2016. They expect the incorporation of the RFID progressively to the rest of the brands of the group.

Inditex uses the RFID for the identification of each item of clothing through radio frequency, incorporating a chip inside the alarm at the logistic centres of Inditex. After that, the company is able to identify where is each item during all the stages of the supply chain.

I suggest you to watch the video below in order to understand how useful is this system in each stage of the supply chain.

 

Basically, the advantages that this technology provides are:

• The location of each item in all the stages of the supply chain.
• Every shop is able to have the precise information of the inventory that allows to replenish immediately the stock in the shelves or to ask for new inventory to the logistic centres.
• The customers are able to know in which establishment is their desired item of clothing through the web page and the app.
• RFID allows the store of more data than other identification systems.
• The staff is able to do and easy inventory.
• There is a reduction in the number of mistakes in the product data.

As a conclusion the technology RFID for Zara is synonym of agility, simplicity, information, confidence, precision and speed.

 

The future of retail. Case Amazon GO

Today, the new technologies have made possible great changes in the supply chain increasing profits. This post is going to focus in the retailers and how the technology has change, not only the logistics, but also the customer experience.

There are numerous companies that have developed new technology systems offering new possibilities to the client. For example, the apple customers can walk in the stores, scan a product with the Apple store app, charge the amount of money in the attached credit card and walk out without checking out. But Amazon has gone a step further with a new concept called Amazon Go.

Amazon Go brokes conventional supermarket wisdom creating a mix between online shopping and in-person shopping. The process is easy, you use an app to enter the store, then you take the product you want and leave, receiving automatically the receipt by email.

You can see how Amazon Go works in the video below.

As you can see, Amazon go uses mobile e-commerce, machine learning and computer vision in order to allow the clients to buy grocery products without a cashier. This technology accomplishes an easy and fast purchase experience.

The advance in technology not only improves the consumer experience also involves changes in the logistics.

This technology allows the obtaining of a high amount of big data. On the one hand, it automatically detects when a shelve is empty in order to restock it immediately. On the other hand, Amazon is able to know the stock in the inventory at every moment and has the enough data to make accurate forecast demands. Thus, with the data collection Amazon is able to have a perfect communication with the suppliers, a great inventory control and the possibility to make personal recommendations and offers easily.

WAREHOUSE AUTOMATION. CONSUM CASE

Background 

Consum is a Spanish cooperative that distributes grocery, house and beauty products with the strategy of variety, quality and price.

The cooperative counts with 684 supermarkets and 6 logistic centres in Spain.

In particular, this post will focus in the Consum logistic centre located in Silla that is responsible for storing and distributing Consum and Charter supermarkets dry feeding, drugstore, perfumery and bazaar products.

Problem

Since its inception, the Silla warehouse had to deal daily with a huge variety of products resulting in a constant flow of goods coming in and out of the logistic centre.

In addition, the warehouse has to continuously adapt the products to the load unit demanded by the supermarket. For example, the big Consum supermarkets, frequently located in the city centres, request full pallets of usual products and the outskirt supermarkets ask for half pallets or a lower load unit.

Due to this, the company had problems to optimize the plant space falling thus into a decrease in efficiency and increase in costs.

Solution

Consum, in order to solve the problems in Silla’s plant and to equalize the main competitors as Mercadona, decided to automate the logistic platform with help from the ULMA company. They decided to divide the logistic platform in two buildings, the first one, intended for silo and the second one for picking.

The building created to store high rotation products took up 5527 square metres and has a height of 30 metres. It is equipped with 9 automatic stacker cranes with 18368 locations. This automated store system is able to manage automatically all the incoming and outgoing of ½ pallet load, ¼ pallet load or europallet being able to lead order processing automatically. In adittion, this system allow to fit the demand of big and small stores.

On the other hand, the second building has 8855 square metre surface with 6 elevators and 12 transfer carriages, where the staff is able to manage small demands and low rotation products.

RESULT

As a result Consum has achieve the construction of a sustainable plant with a big technological bet that got the optimization of the plant, a hard decrease in the mistakes, a productivity increase and an improvement in the working conditions in the platform.

Click to see how the Silla plant works after this refurbishment.