You've heard the adage: Think global, act local. For many end users, pallets and transport packaging products are the ultimate locally-purchased item. They are sourced at the plant or DC and shipped locally.
For companies that use pallets and transport packaging at multiple locations, Millwood has a new adage: think local but act national with a National Accounts Program. "Millwood can provide new and used pallets as well as pallet repair, recovery and return services on a local basis across the US," says Keith Countryman, vice president of the National Accounts Program at Millwood. "With our manufacturing plants, depots and supply network, we can provide the local service that is so important to manufacturers and distributors today wherever they are located."
Just what type of service is Millwood providing its National Account customers? Countryman offers three examples.
Printing Industry: Millwood provides about 5,000 plus pallets a day to multiple locations for one leading printer. Recently, that printer needed additional pallets to meet a highly-sensitive deadline at 5 plants in Wisconsin. "We were able to push an additional 8,000 pallets a day, seven days a week, into their Wisconsin plants for approximately a month," says Countryman, adding that this volume was on top of their regular shipments to other locations. "They never missed a print run or a time-sensitive mailing."
Glass Container Manufacturer: Prior to turning to Millwood, one manufacturer of glass containers was spending millions each year on new assets simply because it didn't know what it had or where the materials were located in their system. Today, Millwood handles recovery, repair and return of a pool of plastic and wooden pallets, wood top frames and solid fiber tier sheets, from 11 facilities across 9 states. More importantly, using Millwood's proprietary PalletView ™ asset management software, the customer knows exactly how many of each item it has, how many were returned by customers, what condition they're in and where those assets are located. "In the first year of the program, our customer saved over $2 million because they didn't buy as much new replacement material as they had been buying in the past," says Countryman. Millwood also designed a piece of equipment to remove glass shards from tier sheets. Instead of discarding those sheets, Millwood cleans the sheets and puts them back into service for multiple trips.
Retailer: One national retailer relies on Millwood to manage the pool of pallets it uses to ship product from its DCs to its stores in two states. Prior to the program, the retailer was buying as many as 50,000 new pallets a year for those two locations because pallets were disappearing. What's more, the pallets it was receiving were inconsistent and wouldn't always work with the retailer's pallet jacks. "One of the first things we did was use the Pallet Design System (PDS) software program to create an improved specification that increases the life expectancy of the pallet," says Countryman. "Over time, we have upgraded the pool so that every pallet will work with a pallet jack." What's more, with Millwood managing the recovery of the pallets, the retailer is getting 75-to-80% of its pallets returned. How many were coming back before? "No one really knew because no one was documenting it," Countryman says.
Millwood's National Account program extends beyond new and used pallet programs, to include vendor-managed inventory, just-in-time delivery into lean manufacturing operations and transport packaging products such as stretch and shrink film and plastic and metal strapping.
In addition, Countryman adds, Millwood is rapidly building its corrugated business on a national basis. Along with pallet recycling services, Millwood can also recycle scrap corrugated, plastic and strapping. "That allows our customers to have a single source for recycling all of their transport packaging waste, rather than keeping one trailer for pallets other trailers for corrugated, strapping and plastic," Countryman says. What's more, Liberty Technologies, a Millwood company, designs and installs end of the line packaging systems, including palletizers, stretch and shrink wrap systems and strapping machines.
To learn more about Millwood’s National Accounts Program, your single source solution, visit us online at
www.millwoodinc.com. Or contact Keith Countryman at 330-609-0111,
E-mail.