Everyone in business knows all about running out of time. For most businesses and employees there never seems to be enough hours in the day to get everything done. But running out of space is a relatively new phenomenon for some manufacturing companies, and it has the potential to cause just as many headaches.
The problem is often simply a byproduct of the evolution of business. For manufacturing companies that have been in business for 20 years or more, changes in the way they go about their business have been seismic. Let’s look at one industry—wood component manufacturing—as an example.
Just 20 years ago, the average wood component manufacturing company’s factory floor would be divided up into three sections:
With bulk orders commonplace, inventory and loading areas needed to be large enough to hold enough raw material and finished product waiting for delivery.
What happened next?
The advent of cheap imports from Asia knocked the heart out of North America’s wood component manufacturing...especially for bulk orders, where North American companies simply could not compete. This left the small orders, custom and high-end jobs for the few manufacturing companies that survived. For these companies, survival depended on the ability to harness technology—to bring in the next generation CNC routers and other milling machines to produce superior quality work. For the companies that could afford to invest in technology, the rewards came quickly, and this is why wood component manufacturing in North America has begun to flourish once more.
But for many companies the tradeoff for lean manufacturing and new technology is the erosion of space. Today, the traditional holding areas for inventory and finished product have been filed with new machinery. Now the orders are flooding back in, and space is at a premium.
Drop boxes—trailers full of empty wood pallets that can be delivered to your factory and act as a mobile warehouse are an ideal solution for companies that are struggling for space.
Windsor, Quebec, based HWP possesses a fleet of over 40 trailers, and the company is ideally situated to deliver trailers as a mobile warehouse solution across Southern Quebec and into the U.S., along the New England corridor. All of HWP’s wood packaging solutions comply with the latest HT ISPM-15 legislation, meaning your products can be safely and quickly transported across all borders.
For further information or to request a quote for standard or custom-built wood pallets, contact HWP today.
