DC Velocity - December 2017

inbound

You may hate the hassle of returning merchandise, but retailers hate it even more. For them, managing a flood of returns means added work and added expense, with virtually no upside. But what if the technology from a popular smartphone game could help prevent shoppers from buying the wrong item in the first place?

In recent months, some of the industry’s biggest e-commerce players have invested in augmented reality (AR), software that overlays digital images of an object onto the view seen through a smartphone’s camera. The functionality has been around for years but shot to fame in 2016 when the Pokémon Go game gained popularity.

Last month, the cookware and kitchen décor retailer Williams-Sonoma Inc. spent $112 million to acquire Outward Inc., a San Jose, Calif.-based provider of 3-D imaging and AR tools that allow shoppers to peer through their smartphones and see what that new Vitamix Blender or linen tablecloth would look like in their very own kitchen.

The news came just a week after Amazon.com Inc. unveiled its own augmented reality app, a tool called AR View that lets online shoppers superimpose a 3-D rendering of certain products onto images of their own home or office. (You can view a demo at Amazon’s website, www.amazon. com/b?node=17403032011.) Retailers Ikea, Wayfair, and Houzz also have features on their mobile commerce platforms that allow shoppers to “see” how furniture and appliances from the merchants’ catalogs would look in their own homes.

Can AR stem the tide of returns?

Ship a load of bottles in a trailer or container and you’ll probably first pack them in cardboard boxes. The boxes make bottles easy to stack, but they also mean added cost and weight. That led logistics professionals at Dow AgroSciences LLC to ask whether they had to use shipping containers at all.

The answer, apparently, was no. Working in conjunction with plastic container specialist RPC-Promens-Innocan, the Indianapolis-based seed and pesticide company came up with a new packaging system for agrochemical products that allowed it to do away with cardboard boxes entirely. Their solution replaces the jerry cans the company had been using with auto-stackable PET ( polyethylene terephthalate) bottles with square sides and shaped bases that fit together like Lego bricks. Handlers can stack the squared bottles directly on pallets, securing the load with lightweight plastic film.

The auto-stackable bottles are 30 percent lighter than the old HDPE (high-density polyethylene) jerry cans, which reduced the company’s carbon dioxide footprint by 20 percent per liter of product content and eliminated up to 40 metric tons per year of corrugated paper packaging, according to Indiana nonprofit Centric Inc., which promotes innovation in the state.

Centric was impressed enough with the bottles that it chose Dow AgroSciences as one of the winners of its 2017 Indiana Innovation Awards. Dow was one of nine winners selected from a field of 48 finalists.

Square bottles cut down on packaging

While much of the industry grapples with a skilled-labor shortage, Ryder System Inc. has filled nearly 6,000 positions from an often overlooked labor pool: retired military veterans. Veterans with logistics-re-lated experience have proved to be a good fit with the Miami-based transportation and supply chain company’s operations, Ryder says. “The veteran community … is rich with disciplined, stand-up individuals whose skill sets match well with positions in our company, from diesel technicians to logistics managers,” said Ryder Chairman and CEO Robert Sanchez in a statement.

Last month, the company was honored for its efforts when the U.S. Chamber of Commerce presented Ryder with its “Hiring Our Heroes Lee Anderson Veteran and Military Spouse Employment Award,” citing the company’s record of hiring and retaining veterans, transitioning service members, and military spouses.

Since Ryder launched its military recruiting program six years ago, the company has hired more than 5,850 veterans and increased the percentage of veterans among its U.S. workforce to more than 11 percent, the company said.

As part of its recruiting efforts, Ryder provides a 12-week, hands-on diesel technician training program for military veterans exiting the service. Hosted at Fort Sill in Oklahoma and Fort Riley in Kansas, the program has graduated 43 students to date, with 10 more slated to complete the training this month. The company has also created a Women Veterans Task Force consisting of female military veterans in managerial or supervisorial roles at Ryder who serve as brand ambassadors and positive voices in the veteran community.