April 25, 2014
Jack Ampuja: President, Supply Chain Optimizers & Executive in Residence, Niagara University
Jack has over 35 years of supply chain management experience with five Fortune 500 firms including Senior Vice President of Operations at a multi-billion dollar international company heading up a $200 million division with 800 employees. Jack is a regular speaker on supply chain issues and trends making over 80 presentations at conferences or workshops in the past five years. Audiences include Council of Supply Chain Management, and Supply Chain & Logistics Canada. He co-chairs the Logistics Council for the Buffalo Niagara Partnership and also serves on their Canada Council. He is a member of the Planning Group positioning the Buffalo Niagara Region as an International Trade Gateway as well as a 30 year member of the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals and serves on the Western New York Roundtable board. He also serves on the board of directors of Continental 1 [Toronto to Miami Trade Corridor] and as an advisor to Kong & Allan Consulting of Shanghai and TSE Global Logistics of Atlanta.
Packaging Optimization: The Route to Reducing Costs & Carbon Footprint
Although Bob Delaney identified Packaging Optimization as a major opportunity for logistics efficiency in the 1998 State of Logistics Report it continues to be overlooked and under-emphasized in most companies. After Wal-Mart established a 5% packaging reduction target for its suppliers in late 2006, optimization has become a major focus at many companies. The publicly announced savings targets are $3.5 billion to Wal-Mart and double that to its suppliers. This magnitude of savings has raised interest in packaging optimization to an all-time high.
While on size alone no other company can equal the dollars that Wal-Mart will achieve, most others have bigger % opportunities because their supply chains are not as efficient to begin with. Over 500 packaging optimization projects have proven that the average cost reduction opportunity is 10% or double what Wal-Mart has projected.
Pick-pack companies have an even bigger opportunity because of business complexity – thousands of unique shipments lead to huge volumes of partially filled boxes; most e-commerce shippers end up shipping more than 50% air and filler which isn’t efficient for shipper or receiver and terrible for the environment.