Part 1: Greatest Challenges
Part 2:Reverse Logistics Trails Forward Logistics
Part 4: When the Last Mile is the First
One of the greatest challenges to warehouse management isn’t getting product out the door but handling it when it comes back.
I was 16 in 1967, when I began to work summers in my father’s natural foods warehouse. That first year, I got assigned to the worst job in the entire warehouse. The aptly named “bug room” was a dank, dark and smelly, bunker-like hold, filled with broken jars of sticky molasses, weevil-infested flour, moldy vitamins and hundreds of other returned goods in various states of ickiness. My task was to log each and every item, make various marks on a clipboard and turn in papers to whoever was monitoring inventory.
Warehouses have come a long way since that time more than a half century ago. But while the returns process may not be quite as primitive or as messy as in my day, reverse logistics continues to challenge pretty much everyone along the supply chain. The issue is getting more pressing. The online economy has created a culture that believes returns to be an integral part of the shopping process, with the cost of returns shipping these days absorbed by the retailer, not the consumer.
Lost revenue from returns totals an eye-popping $600 billion annually worldwide, according to various research studies. Put that in perspective: Americans spent $1 trillion during the last holiday season. Returns average 8% of totals, which would mean Americans shipped back some $80 billion worth of goods from that period alone.
