Throughout 2019, under the guidance and support of favorable policies, the construction of a circular sharing system for logistics packaging equipment such as pallets and turnover boxes has been accelerating. Especially with the promotion and application of new technologies, new models, and new concepts, relevant companies are actively exploring and innovating, and logistics packaging recycling sharing has made new developments.
Standardization, intelligence, greening, synergy and sharing are the basic directions that the packaging industry must adhere to in the future.
At the 2nd Logistics Packaging Technology Development Conference held a few days ago, Cai Jin, Vice President of China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing, shared his views on the development of the logistics packaging industry. In Cai Jin’s view, economic transformation and upgrading, high quality Development is inseparable from logistics packaging.
Among them, the importance of sharing is particularly mentioned. Only when logistics packaging is shared, can resources be idealized, cost can be reduced, and efficiency can be improved.
With the transformation of the national economy from high-speed growth to high-quality development, and the accelerated transformation of production organization to the supply chain, one of the key links is packaging. The requirements for standardization, coordination, and sharing of logistics packaging are becoming more and more urgent.
In this context, state departments have also begun to issue relevant policies to support the sharing of logistics packaging.
For example, in March this year, 24 ministries and commissions including the National Development and Reform Commission jointly issued the "Opinions on Promoting the High-quality Development of Logistics and Promoting the Formation of a Strong Domestic Market", which proposed to support the recycling and sharing of unitized loading equipment such as containers, pallets, cage trucks, and turnover boxes. The construction of the service operation system encourages and supports the circular sharing mode of the public "logistics packaging pool".
In April, in response to e-commerce and express logistics packaging issues, the National Development and Reform Commission, together with the Ministry of Commerce and postal departments, proposed policies and measures to promote e-commerce logistics standardization, develop unitized logistics, and promote standard pallets, shared express and other recyclable logistics facilities.
At the same time, the standard system related to the recycling and sharing of logistics equipment is gradually improving.
Taking pallets as an example, Tang Ying, secretary-general of the Pallet Subcommittee of the National Logistics Standardization Technical Committee, introduced at the 2019 Unitized Logistics Status and Development Seminar recently held that my country’s current pallet standards have reached 38. In the standard system, pallet service and management standards are an important part, including pallet sharing system standards.
At present, the relevant national standards mainly include: "Pallet Common System Wooden Flat Pallet Maintenance Specification", "Pallet Common System Management Specification", "Pallet Common System Electronic Label Application Specification", "Pallet Common System Plastic Flat Pallet"; commercial industry standards mainly include: "Pallet Leasing Enterprise Service Specification", "Pallet Sharing System Operation Management Specification", "Common System Consignment Quality Acceptance Specification" and so on.
In order to manage and use these packaging materials, companies also need to be equipped with a large number of human and cash resources. These realistic pressures and challenges severely restrict the circulation and sharing of logistics packaging. In contrast, smart logistics packaging integrates emerging technologies such as the Internet of Things, cloud computing, big data, and artificial intelligence, which can better integrate circular packaging and smart supply chains.
Cai Jin believes that new technologies such as 5G, Internet of Things, big data, artificial intelligence, sensors, and 3D printing continue to emerge and are widely used, giving new momentum to the development of the logistics packaging industry, providing new opportunities and important support. Therefore, how to use new technologies to promote the shared development of logistics packaging recycling will be a problem that all parties need to focus on.
The development of logistics packaging requires comprehensive coordination based on the different industries and links involved in the logistics supply chain. In the process of building a shared logistics and packaging recycling system, it is particularly important to achieve coordination among all parties.
For example, some companies have proposed that in order to upgrade the relationship between retail and supply cooperation, it is necessary to develop a supply chain collaboration platform to integrate upstream and downstream business flow, logistics, information flow, and capital flow; realize supply and demand docking, centralized procurement, unified inventory management, payment and settlement , Logistics and distribution and other functional integration; improve the supply chain's automatic replenishment, rapid response and resource sharing capabilities.
Although China's unitized logistics pool is still in the stage of design and planning, and there are still many unknown challenges in the network layout, operation management, and actual implementation in the future, the opening of this kind of thinking is still worth encouraging.
The advancement of the logistics and packaging recycling sharing system requires policy support, the participation of enterprises, and more innovative thinking and specific practices. Changes are taking place, let us wait and see.
