Science-oriented 3M is a $30bn global company with a portfolio that includes around 55,000 products. On the consumer side, 3M makes products like Post-It Notes, Scotch Magic Tape and Filtrete Air Filters, but the company has four other business groups for energy and electronics, industrial, safety and graphics and healthcare solutions.
The use of bioplastics — made from plants instead of fossil fuels — is expected to grow by at least 50 percent in the next five years, according to the European Bioplastics Association.
Project Passport, launched by SPI: The Plastics Industry Trade Association, is intended to provide companies in the food packaging supply chain with a suite of communication tools and educational resources to help convey relevant information about their products to ensure compliance and address the concerns of consumers and customers.
Innovation of the Year: Disruptive technology products must get to market faster than ever, and a product innovation center at Flextronics reconfigures the supply chain to do just that.
Runner-up: Sears Holdings Corp.
Finalists: Intel, Fast Logistics, Zimbabwe National Family Planning Council
This past June, the largest overnight delivery carriers, FedEx and UPS, announced that they would apply dimensional weight pricing to all shipments, effective January 2015. It is expected that shipping costs will increase 20 percent to 30 percent and affect over 70 percent of all shipments. What shippers are truly affected by the new pricing model? What can be done to avoid the cost increase?
In the grand scheme of things, delays, procrastination and postponement aren't good things. What's more, Benjamin Franklin was decidedly not a champion of putting things off. In fact, his actual words were "Don't put off until tomorrow what you can do today." Wise advice for most areas of life. Except, that is, when it comes to food and beverage packaging.
Densification is the process of reducing product size (volume or weight) while maintaining or increasing its value. This is not a new trend. In fact, it is a tenet of good supply chain management and logistics, according to a four-part blog series published by the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics.