EFFICIENT UNIT LOADS - ECR Community

7.6. Conclusions
Developing efficient tertiary unit loads is vital to the
success of ECR. The full benefit of ER can only be
realised if the same tertiary item is used right across
the ‘total’ chain. Other product flows, shown in Figure
30, would also be improved by using the common
tertiary item.
Current standards and practice poorly utilise
vehicle volume.
A critical handling step in many supply chains is the
assortment creation point, since this is where the two
halves of the supply chain meet. Pallets are the main
item in the manufacturers’ part of the supply chain to
optimise storage and handling. In the retailers’ part of
the supply chain, the more assortments created, the
more pallets are replaced by roll cages and, more
recently, dollies. This means that the typical retail RDC
will receive one-of-kind products on pallets, and
despatch assortments in roll cages or dollies. Since
order picking of the assortment is required this change
of unit load type has not normally entailed extra
handling, but the increasing use of cross-docking will
involve an extra handling step if the cross-docked load
arrives at the RDC on a pallet and is transported to the
store on a roll cage or dolly.
The dolly is currently the most versatile tertiary item,
although it is affected by some of the limitations
associated with pallets, explained in 7.2. Used in
conjunction with RTI, the dolly can be used across the
total chain. For other applications, technical
developments are needed to overcome these
limitations and to produce a tertiary item which will be
suitable in both manufacturing and retail
environments.
The Efficient Unit Loads Report 53