The Australian Food and Grocery Council (AFGC) says the release of its Common Despatch Checklist Toolkit will be a valuable resource for supply-chain professionals to drive greater efficiencies to retailers.
Developed by the AFGC’s trading partner forum (TPF), the toolkit provides a suite of simple tools to support suppliers and ensure deliveries to retailers have the best chance of being quickly and easily receipted without issue.
Project Director John Cawley says the TPF has worked to facilitate alignment across the retailers and simplify the task for suppliers.
“The direction provided by the tools is consistent across Coles, Metcash or Woolworths, and the requirements are no more onerous to suppliers than currently,” Mr Cawley said.
The toolkit contains a poster that serves as a visual aide for checking product before despatch; a one-page reference guide giving more detail in relation to basic requirements associated with pallet quality, utilisation and wrapping, carton integrity and SSCC labelling; and an operational document that despatch staff can use before despatching goods to a retailer DC to record any issues identified.
Mr Cawley says the toolkit is the result of the TPF identifying an opportunity to deliver clarity and a common approach to optimising the supplier-to-retailer delivery process, with a focus on the physical flow of goods, called The Perfect Delivery Project.
“This project will continue to develop ways of improving supply-chain efficiencies and will continue to deliver member services by developing toolkits and advice to achieve this objective,” Mr Cawley said.
The toolkit is freely available from the TPF website.