DC Velocity - September 2016

inbound

In late July, the commercial property insurance company FM Global released a report warning supply chain professionals to start thinking about how increased extreme precipitation could affect their supply and distribution networks. The report felt eerily prescient in August, when 6. 9 trillion gallons of rain fell on Louisiana in a single week, causing floods of epic proportions.

Titled “Coping with Extremes: The Impact of Climate Change on Extreme Precipitation and Flooding in the United States and How Business Can Prepare Now,” the report urges companies not to wait until the water starts to rise but to take steps now to reduce the impact of flooding on their own and their suppliers’ operations.

For one thing, it’s time to rethink the old rules of thumb, advises the report. It used to be good practice to avoid locating DCs within a 100-year flood zone. Now, the insurer recommends that new facilities be located outside the 500-year flood zone range.

Supply chain professionals may also want to consider learning some new skills, according to FM Global. “It might not be top of mind for supply chain managers to know about flood hazards and terminology and to be able to read a flood map, but these are good things for them to have in their back pocket,” said Louis A. Gritzo, vice president and manager of research at FM Global, in an interview.

To read the report, go to www. fmglobal.com/riskessentials/ 2016/business-impact-of-climate- change.

Here comes the rain
again …

To help keep readers up to date with the latest thinking in the logistics field, DC VELOCITY has added three new writers to its stable of bloggers. Check out our new blogs by Elmore Alexander, Jeff Schmitz, and Roxana Osuna to read their thought-provoking essays on management, visibility, and the U.S./Mexico trade. You can find them all at www.dcvelocity.com/blogs/.

While you’re there, check out our newly launched guest blog page. Our “One-Off Sound Off: DCV Guest Commentary” blog is a place where industry leaders can share their opinions and expertise with the supply chain community. Recent contributions include guidance on using data to better manage your DC, an analysis of the supply chain service startup landscape, and advice on leveraging mobile data and analytics to make better business decisions.

Have a good blog idea that you’d like to share? Please consider sending a guest blog proposal to feedback@dcvelocity.com.

New kids on the blog

Nowadays, high-density warehouses, with their narrow aisles and towering storage racks, are taken for granted. But they might not exist if George F.

Raymond Sr., founder of The Raymond Corp., hadn’t figured out a mon-ey-saving solution to a common problem more than six decades ago.

According to the Greene, N. Y.-based company, in the late 1940s, a grocery industry consultant mentioned to Raymond that the wide aisles in warehouses were costing U.S. companies millions of dollars. Raymond then came up with an idea that’s nearly ubiquitous today: the narrow-aisle warehouse. Without equipment that could safely and productively operate in that specific environment, though, the concept would never be anything more than a vision.

Raymond enlisted company engineer Christian Gibson to work on the project, and on Aug. 14, 1951, the two received a U.S. patent for a narrow-aisle power-driven material handling truck that could maneuver in aisles that were less than seven feet wide and could put away pallets two tiers high, the company says. That original truck, shown in the accompanying photo, has evolved into today’s Raymond Reach-Fork truck.

In the years since, Raymond has continued to refine the concept. Today, the Reach-Fork truck series has some 200 configurations. The company even offers a special turret truck that can put away pallets at heights of up to 60 feet and maneuver in aisles as narrow as five feet.

Raymond considers innovation to be one of its core competencies: Earlier this summer, the company honored 19 engineers for their contributions to 32 U.S. patents the company has been awarded since 2012. There is even a Raymond Inventors Club, which includes employees and retirees who have been awarded patents throughout the years. “Companies speak publicly of innovation all the time,” said CEO Michael Field at an event honoring the engineers. “Thirty-two patents in four years shows that we act on that conversation and that Raymond is truly invested in innovation.”