inbound

It’s like Ponce de León’s fountain of youth … only in reverse. In an unassuming warehouse in Orlando, Fla., the pallet pooler CHEP is conducting an experiment in aging. Inside the facility, pallets travel through CHEP’s new Test Track, a system of conveyors, 2,800- pound weights (the recommended load limit for a CHEP pallet), and battering rams designed to age the pallets the equivalent of 10 years in just three weeks. As the pallets travel in a loop, they’re subjected to impacts comparable to what they might receive from a lift truck. The rams are even calibrated to hit a pallet in different spots.

Why turn pristine pallets into splintery wrecks? It takes some of the guesswork out of predicting how they’ll stand the test of time. The company can, for example, try out different pallet “recipes” before the pallets are made available for customers’ use. And it can now get answers to such questions as: How would replacing a particular 3.5-inch plank with a 5-inch plank of a higher-quality wood affect the pallet’s durability?

The Test Track, an extension of CHEP’s Innovation Center, is booked for the next 18 months with internal projects. CHEP hopes to eventually make the Test Track available to customers.

Forever young? Not these pallets

The importance of global communication to an international freight forwarder can hardly be overstated. So it’s only fitting that the folks at Dedola Global Logistics (DGL), an international freight forwarder and customs broker, would be holding a video language contest to mark the company’s 35 years in business. Titled “Language of Logistics,” it features employees at DGL’s Los Alamitos, Calif., headquarters talking about international logistics in 11 different languages. Contestants who correctly identify the languages will be entered in a drawing for an Apple iPad 2.

The focus on languages was a natural, said Stephen Dedola, DGL’s chief finan-
cial officer. “Our ability to communicate efficiently, in a variety of languages, is
a valuable asset to our company and to our clients.”
The contest ends July 18. Entry information and details are available at
www.dedola.com.

DGL challenges you to “Name that language”

Governance—the management and determination of policies, decision rights, and responsibilities under a contractual agreement—is an important element of a successful outsourcing relationship. It’s also an extremely complicated topic. But luckily there are resources that provide some expert guidance.

One of those resources is “Unpacking Outsourcing Governance: How to Build a Sound Governance Structure to Drive Insight Versus Oversight,” a white paper developed by the University of Tennessee’s Center for Executive Education, the Corporate Executive Board (CEB), and the International Association for Contract and Commercial Management (IACCM).

The paper is organized in two sections. Part 1 outlines governance concepts and principles for developing a sound governance structure. Part 2 explains how to develop a “vested” governance structure, in which both parties have a vested interest in each other’s success. The paper’s recommendations on what should go into an outsourcing governance structure are based on the Vested Outsourcing concept championed by UT’s Kate Vitasek, combined with research and data from CEB and IACCM.