The tour will be structured to follow a global supply chain move from emptying of an ocean container of consumer goods through to sorting and induction into the air and ground transport network for delivery to consumers.

We will begin the tour at the Purolator Global Supply Chain and Freight (LTL) Facility at 18233 Blundell Road in Richmond where we will see the process of receiving, unloading and sorting an ocean container and induction of shipments into the LTL system. The GSC facility has the capacity to process 170 containers per week.

Next we will drive to the Automated Courier Sorting and Air Operations facility near the airport at 3700 Jericho Road where we will get a tour of the newly minted $32 million dollar fully automated sorting facility unveiled in 2009. This facility has the capacity to process more than 12,000 packages per hour.

Bus transportation and car pooling will be offered from Blundell Road to Jericho Road, as parking is limited. Light refreshments will be provided. Space is limited to 50 participants so register early to avoid disappointment.

Please note:

• In the interest of safety, please do not wear open toe or high heel shoes.
• Employees of 3PL, national express courier and LTL firms are kindly asked not to register.

SCL Tour Brochure (click here to view/download)

Date / Time

Tuesday September 14, 2010 – 4pm to 7:15pm

Location

Purolator Global Supply Chain and Freight (LTL) Facility
18233 Blundell Road, Richmond, BC

Registration

All registrations will be handled by SCL – please use the following link to register.

Please note CMHDS Members can register at the Affiliate Rate of $25.00.

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR  THE PUROLATOR TOUR

 Join us on Friday June 18th for the 2010 CMHDS Golf Tournament, Dinner & Annual General Meeting at the Delta Golf Club.  This event is an opportunity for members to spend a day in the sun, enjoy some golf, some friends and some food. We will also be holding the CMHDS Annual General Meeting where we will review the events of the year and elect the new Board of Directors for the 2010-2011 season.

Not much of a golfer? Then come out for the AGM (free, of course) or just for dinner ($35).

Here are some of the pictures from last year’s event:

Date: Friday June 18th, 2010

Location: Delta Golf Club, 11550 #10 Highway, Delta, BC, V4K 3N3 – Pro Shop: 604-594-1414

1st Tee Off: 1:15pm

Dinner & Annual General Meeting – 6:00pm

Cost:

• Golf & Dinner: $75.00 CMHDS & SCL Members
• Golf & Dinner: $85.00 Non-Members
• Dinner Only: $35.00 Members & Non-Members
• AGM only: Free

Format: Shamble – All drive from tee box, then from best drive, each person plays their own ball to the hole.

The $10,000 Hole-In-One Challenge – New for this year! Ace the 13th hole (160 yard / par 3) and you win $10,000.

Power Cart Rental - $40 tax included (book in advance through ProShop – 604-594-1414).

Registration:  REGISTRATION IS NOW CLOSED.

All golfers DONATE a gift, everyone receives a prize!!

Buffet Dinner Menu

• Salads – Crisp Garden Salad with Variety of Dressings, Home Style Potato Salad, Thai Noodle Salad, Classic Caesar Salad.
• Platters – Relish & Pickle Platter, Fresh Vegetables & Dip Platter.
• Accompaniments – Yukon Gold Roasted Potatoes, Chef’s Selection of Seasonal Vegetables.
• Entrée – Herb Crusted Roast Beef served Au Jus
• Desserts – Assorted Pastries
• Beverages – Coffee & Tea

Join us on Tuesday June 1st at 3:00pm as we tour the Liquor Distribution Branch (LDB) Distribution Centre in Vancouver, BC.

One of two distribution centres (the second is located in Kamloops) the Liquor Distribution Branch (LDB) is one of the two governmental bodies responsible for regulating and monitoring the liquor industry in British Columbia, the other being the Liquor Control and Licensing Branch (LCLB)).

The LDB is the only organization allowed to purchase, import, and distribute alcoholic beverages in British Columbia. They employ more than 3,500 people, and operate 215 government liquor stores under the BC Liquor Stores name, found all across the province.

Topics include scan-picking to the coordination of the shipping schedules, ordering cycles, and how the LDB is dealing with the growing business from independent retailers.

PLEASE NOTE
**STEEL TOED SHOES ARE MANDATORY**

Date/Time: Tuesday June 1st – 3:00pm to 5:00pm

Location: LDB Distribution Centre, 3200 East Broadway, Vancouver, BC

Cost: $15 members / $25 non-members (online payment by Visa, MasterCard or AMEX only)

Registration: CLICK HERE TO ACCESS THE ONLINE REGISTRATION & PAYMENT FORM

For all the details & pictures head over to ForkliftRally.com.

On Saturday May 1st, 2010  you’ll get your chance to prove it as the CMHDS presents the 13th Annual BC Championship Forklift Rally.

This year’s Rally adds a fourth division, Propane Counterbalanced, ups the prize money to over $3,500.00 and the registration fees have been rolled back to $49.00 for those who register early. With more sponsors, and additions like Forklift Basketball it promises to be a great event.

Click here to go to ForkliftRally.com and view all of the details.

The 13th Annual BC Championship Forklift Rally would not be possible without the support of our sponsors:

CMHDS Expands NAOSH Week Involvement and Becomes NAOSH Week 2010 Supporter

As outlined at the www.naosh.ca website, NAOSH Week presents an excellent opportunity to focus, reinforce and strengthen commitment to occupational safety and health. Participation and involvement in NAOSH Week has been shown to: improve attitudes towards safety, increase understanding of the importance of occupational health & safety, foster a safety-minded culture, increase cooperation, raise awareness, as well as assist in team building, and improve communication between employees, safety committees and safety professionals.

CMHDS encourages all member companies to participate in NAOSH Week 2010 and keep us up to date with your successes.

For more information contact Rick LeBlanc at 604 999-2567, or email to rick.leblanc@exel.com.

Pallet-like structures have been used as bases for at least a few hundred years for applications such as the safe stacking and stabilization of kegs. Let’s look at the Dictionary.com definition, which describes a pallet as “a small, low, portable platform on which goods are placed for storage or moving, as in a warehouse or vehicle.”

If one is to follow the definition at Dictionary.com, then these structures were pallets in that they were used for storage, and they did indeed predate the lift truck. They did not, however, facilitate movement of goods, which most professional definitions for pallets would prescribe to be an important part of the definition. The appearance of unit-load bases designed to move goods takes us to to the very late 1800s. The predecessor of the wooden pallet was the wooden (and iron or steel) skid, which consisted of stringers or legs fastened to a top deck. It first appeared in American factories in conjunction with the low lift truck. A crude low lift hand truck was invented in 1887 that could elevate a skid a few inches by manual means. A more durable, all-steel low lift truck design was introduced in 1909. Early lift trucks had a lift platform. The appearance of forks came later. Skids were classified as “live,” containing casters on the base for manual positioning of the skid, or “dead” if they did not have casters.

With the introduction of the high lift fork truck in the last half of the 1910s, the stage was eventually set for the introduction of the bottom pallet deck, resulting in the modern pallet. As early as 1926, the essence of the modern lift truck had been developed. Now, pallets no longer were simply a means of moving materials within the plant. High lift trucks made possible vertical stacking of unit loads and a resulting dramatic improvement of warehouse and plant storage efficiencies. Several early pallet patents exist, and these are referenced at Wikipedia.org in its discussion of the pallet.

The pallet evolved in stages. Spacers were used between loads to allow fork placement and withdrawal, progressing to the placement of boards atop stringers to make skids. This facilitated the stacking of a greater range of loads. Eventually boards were fastened to the bottom to create the modern pallet. The development of the pallet eliminated the potentially unsafe and time consuming practice of the operator frequently climbing out on the front of the lift truck to place the 2x4s between unit loads, while reducing the risk of stringer collapse.

Trade magazine advertisements from the 1920s provide the first evidence of pallets being shipped by rail domestically in the U.S.

Pallet development further evolved with the development of 4-way entry and alternative material pallets in the 1940s. During World War 2, the use of the pallet and forklift would become a key component of the U.S. military logistics strategy. See for example, “Why Use Two When One Will Do.” (http://packagingrevolution.net/why-use-two-if-one-will-do)  After the War, the use of pallets became increasingly popular in industry. But more on that for a future instalment.

In the final analysis, most pallet professionals would say that the forklift came first, and the pallet came later. Based on more commonplace definitions, however, such as offered at Dictionary.com, you could also be right in saying that the pallet came first.

Rick LeBlanc is a CMHDS director, editor of www.PackagingRevolution.net, and co-author of Pallets: A North American Perspective. He can be reached at rick@packagingrevolution.net

Join us on Wednesday March 3rd as we present Logistics For Breakfast: How To Stage Your Own In-Company Forklift Rally.

Hosted & presented by the team that stages the BC Championship Forklift Rally each year, this breakfast seminar will cover all of the aspects that go into staging a forklift competition. Whether you are looking to promote safety within your company in a fun way, prepare for competition in the upcoming BC Championship Forklift Rally or just want to find out what goes into staging a forklift competition, you will find this seminar of value. All stages from inital planning to staging and scoring the event will be covered. 

Who should attend this event?

• Companies who will be holding inter-company Forklift Rally’s
• Companies / Safety Officers looking to promote forklift safety & knowledge in a fun way
• Companies & Individuals looking to compete in the upcoming BC Championship Forklift Rally (May 1st, 2010)
• Anyone interested in forklift competitions and/or the BC Championship Forklift Rally

Topics include:

• Obstacle Course Design & Setup
• Pre-Trip Inspections
• Written Testing
• Judging / Scoring
• Event Management & Promotion
• Required Equipment & Sourcing

 Event Details

Location:  ABC Restaurant, #130-8080 120th Street, Surrey, BC (Scott Rd. & 80th Ave)

Date/Time: 8:00am to 10:00am – Wednesday March 3rd, 2010

Cost: $15.00 Members / $25.00 Non-Members (includes full buffet breakfast)

Registration: Click Here To Register

Industry Canada research has shown that adoption of technology in the supply chain is a key factor in gaining best-in-class status among the competition.

This is especially true in times of economic turbulence when businesses are under tremendous pressure to make tangible productivity gains while cutting costs.

Fast changing business conditions require creative business solutions at all levels of the supply chain. Rapid access to information and communications technologies means that integrated software solutions are essential, in today’s environment, to address supply chain challenges, such as risk management, out-sourcing, demand planning, inventory optimization, visibility, and vendor collaboration.

This is particularly true for Canadian companies, who are far behind their American competition in the effective use of available technologies to gain success.

Join SCL and Microsoft Canada for an interactive session that will discuss how technology can turn challenges into opportunities by:

• Helping your team better control your supply chain
• Giving your employees the information, capability, and control to satisfy customers and help strengthen your company’s competitive advantage
• Building more productive vendor relationships

For more information visit the SCL website at www.SCLCanada.org or click here for the event pdf.

Join us on Wednesday February 3rd as we tour the Lucerne Foods Milk Plant in Burnaby, BC. This 75,000 sq.ft. facility is one of three state of the art facilities located in Western Canada that make up Lucerne’s Dairy Division.

The Burnaby facility which recently implemented a 5S & Lean Principles program produces approximately 850,000 litres of product per week and stores and ships 94 SKU’s plus seasonal products to 71 Safeway stores and various independent accounts.. Tour attendees will see an operation that not only receives raw product, then processes, packages, stores and ships but also deals with the added complexities of a product that is liquid and time & temperature sensitive requiring special handling and fast inventory turns.

Tour space is limited so sign up now!

Tour Details

Date / Time:
Wednesday February 3, 2010 – 4:00pm to 5:30pm (Tour #1 – SOLD OUT)
Wednesday February 3, 2010 – 6:00pm to 7:30pm (Tour #2 – SOLD OUT)

Location:
Lucerne Milk Plant, 7650 18th Street, Burnaby BC

Registration:
$15:00 (CMHDS & SCL Members) / $25.00 (Non-Members)

About Lean Principles & 5S Practices

Lean – centered around creating more value with less work. Lean is a process management philosophy derived mostly from the Toyota Production System. It is renowned for its focus on increasing efficiency, decreasing waste, and using empirical methods to decide what matters, rather than uncritically accepting pre-existing ideas.

5S – the name of a workplace organization methodology that uses a list of five Japanese words which, translated into English, start with the letter S.

• Phase 1 – Seiri or Sorting: Keeping only essential items.
• Phase 2 – Seiton or Straighten or Set in Order: Focuses on efficiency.
• Phase 3 – Seisō or Sweeping or Shining or Cleanliness: Systematic Cleaning or the need to keep the workplace clean as well as neat.
• Phase 4 – Seiketsu or Standardizing: Standardized work practices or operating in a consistent and standardized fashion.
• Phase 5 – Shitsuke or Sustaining the discipline: Refers to maintaining and reviewing standards.

About Lucerne Foods

Lucerne is a Safeway brand product line that dates back to 1904 when a group of dairy farmers in the San Joaquin Valley of California banded together to form a cooperative they called the Lucerne Cream and Butter Company, and built a little plant in Hanford, California. The creamery sold butter and sweetened condensed milk to Safeway’s Southern California division until 1929, when the grocer acquired it and made Lucerne its dairy label. Strategically located Lucerne’s Canadian Dairy Division is able to service customers from Northern Ontario, west to Vancouver Island.

About Safeway

Safeway was incorporated in 1926, and within two years had more than 2,000 stores. Canada Safeway was established in 1929, and by 1931 the store count had surpassed 3,200. The 1960s brought the company’s entrance into the grocery markets in the United Kingdom, Australia and West Germany, and by 1971 the company was the world’s largest food retailer. In 1977, Safeway launched its first super stores with specialty departments, laying the groundwork for the look of supermarkets today.