Category Archives: Miscellaneous

Making the Warehouse More Sustainable

A recent article over on Logistics Management, which was titled 7 Trends in Sustainable Design but which only gave six (as number six was absent from the list), gave some good tips on making the warehouse more sustainable that can be retroactively applied to existing warehouses.

  • Better Lighting
    Lighting can consume 30% of energy use in a DC. If you reduce this by 33%, that’s 10% off of your energy consumption. And when you consider that many DCs have too many lights that take too much power on for way too long, you see huge opportunities. Be sure to install daylight and motion sensors to make sure that lights only come on when it’s not sufficiently bright and only stay on when there is someone there. Switch to energy-efficient fluorescent fixtures, which can be turned on and off on demand (and are suitable for intermittent operation). And if any renovations are being done, install solar tubes, lighting tubes, and clear glass to take maximum advantage of natural daylight.
  • High-Volume Low-Speed Fans
    Designed to move massive columns of air at low speeds, HVLS fans can help regulate a facility’s temperature year-round from floor to ceiling and permit facilities to increase or decrease thermostat temperature settings between 3 degrees and 5 degrees without realizing any negative temperature changes. Furthermore, if they are networked, monitored, and controlled from a central location, cooling and heating costs can be decreased by up to 50%!
  • Returnable Plastic Containers (RPCs)
    At the very least, use RPCs in internal captive pools designed for a particular (set) of operations, or, if possible, in external shared pools with standardized designs that enable supply chain wide efficiencies. These can minimize operating costs (as non-reusable containers cost money) and minimize waste reduction (by 90% plus), which further reduces costs.

In addition, the following tips not mentioned are also applicable:

  • Use Electric Lifts
    Fuel-based lift trucks use non-renewable resources and produce pollution, which increases the air circulation requirements of the warehouse (and demands even more energy be used). Electric lift trucks produce no pollution and the batteries can be recharged from renewable energy resources.
  • Harvest Your Own Power
    Use ground source heat pumps, solar panels (on the roof/sides of the building) and/or windmills to maximize the use of your own free, sustainable energy sources and minimize your dependence on the grid.
  • Harvest Rainwater
    And use it for cleaning vehicles, flushing toilets, and other toilets where the water does not have to be pure or sufficiently chlorinated.

Headline From the Land of D’oh: Notorious Somali pirate quits: Now is shipping safe?

A recent CNN article which noted that the retirement of the pirate leader Mohamed Abdi Hassan, also known as “Afweyne,” has generated much media coverage, but the real significance of his announcement is the indication it gives of how Somalia’s pirates currently view their business model and that it appears that hijacking vessels in the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden is no longer seen as a relatively risk-free affair concluded that while piracy off the country’s coast will not be ended conclusively … it might be contained to a manageable level.

Depending on what you conclude a manageable level to be, that might happen, but shipping is NOT safe. If a pirate can make 10 times the average annual salary in one hijacking, and one hijacking can command a 5M ransom, even with the introduction of international naval ports, armed guards aboard vessels, and best practices, piracy is not going to stop. First of all, it’s still way too lucrative when the right ship is passing through. While it is true that an average shipment of consumer goods is many times safer, the risk for high-value petroleum, weapons, pharmaceutical, and hi-tech shipments is still there. If there’s a 100M worth of easily-moved cargo on the ship, and pirates know about it, the risk is there — especially with more organized crime getting involved in supply chain thievery. Secondly, when a void is created — there’s always a rush to fill it. Recent warfare against gangs across North and South America has shown us that if multiple gangs are vying for a territory, and the biggest one is wiped out, violence escalates as the smaller gangs jockey for position.

The reality is that, for some of you, shipping is now more dangerous than ever. And any article that tries to insist otherwise is giving you a false sense of security that is even more dangerous. Especially when your cargo is more valuable than drugs and guns.