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Manufacturing is a broad term that is thrown around loosely in the news and in the public domain. 

We've heard for decades about the "decline of manufacturing", but depending on how you measure it, it's not always clear there has been a decline. Frequently a decline of jobs in manufacturing is reported as implying a decline in production, but it is often a result of higher productivity that comes from more automation, improved supply chain logistics and systems. This itself can lead to a decline in employment. 

Reverse logistics is already a fast-growing element of manufacturing and distribution, but lacks the wider understanding it deserves. As a result, many businesses that are unwittingly executing on reverse logistics are missing an opportunity to make it a smooth, efficient and potentially profitable part of their business as they would expect from other process areas.

With the holiday season in the rear-view mirror, there are a lot of messy warehouses out there digesting the aftermath of a contradictory set of challenges – depleted shelves, piles of returns, overstock on unpopular items and excess capacity. If you’re like most retailers – or manufacturers who are new to the E-commerce game in the last few years – then you are probably wondering how you ended up with so much overstock for some categories of your product, right?

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While many companies are just catching their breath from recent holiday shipments, this New England DC is in the midst of ramping up for its annual busy season - Spring Golf!

Making New Year’s resolutions is something we all do, or joke about, or both. But regardless of which category you think you belong in, there’s no question that the New Year is a good time to re-examine how you do things and implement improvements in the workplace.  But where do you start? Every year, the list of “we should…” is a long one, but here are a few ideas that we think are a good place to start:

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the warehouse
A creature was stirring, it was John;

There is perhaps no more important part of your facility than your dock. It’s the start – and the end – of your day, your end-to-end process, and your accounting for your shipments! So making the processes that depend on your dock as smooth and efficient as possible gives everything in-between a better foundation for success.

Two years after the launch of our PowerSwap Nucleus^TM battery pack, we’ve seen a lot of success stories from our customers who’ve upgraded from their original Sealed Lead Acid (SLA) power packs. Although Lithium is something we are all using day-to-day in our personal lives in our cell phones, laptop and almost any other rechargeable device we have, we still get a lot of questions from our customers and readers about some of the more basic aspects of our power packs.

The “Merry” part of the Christmas season can often be forgotten quickly when the first trucks show up at the receiving docks with mountains of returns. There is nothing worse as a retailer than experiencing the feeling that your products were “unwanted”, but if you do it right, returns processing can be a positive for your customers and your bottom line.

This year has been another banner year for all of us and our customers at Newcastle Systems, and with the short week we have for the Thanksgiving holiday, we wanted to take a moment to take stock and share some of what we are thankful for: