Anyone who has purchased eggs, light bulbs and laundry detergent during the same trip to the grocery store; packed the back of an SUV with luggage for five people; or tried to figure the best route to get four kids from four different families home after soccer practice understands the importance of load building.

For years, warehouse management systems (WMS) have optimized inventory levels and operations on the warehouse floor, like receiving, putaway and picking. Likewise, transportation management systems (TMS) have automated and streamlined transportation planning and load tendering.

Once gains are realized from those systems, it's time to look for the next level of optimization and cost savings. Enter load building: not just the way you construct a pallet, but also how you load the truck and build transportation routes.

Load building is especially important for manufacturers and distributors doing business with retailers requiring pallets built to certain specifications to make their DC and store operations more efficient. “We're seeing all sorts of customer requirements when it comes to building pallet loads,” says Paul Moore, director of major systems sales for airport, post and parcel and manufacturing systems at FKI Logistex (877-935-4564). “Retail customers are requiring everything from cartons loaded with their labels out for quick scanning to store-friendly delivery schemes.”

Between automated materials handling equipment, warehouse management and transportation management systems, a variety of ways exist today to meet those requirements and reduce costs.

Automate the process: Whether you're building rainbow pallets—that is loads with multiple products stacked on a pallet in layers—or orienting cartons so that labels can be easily read, automated materials handling systems can streamline the process, particularly in high-volume operations.

One solution is to install an inline print-and-apply operation right before palletizing. That way, labels can be applied to the carton in the proper spot right before they're palletized. That, however, isn't always possible. “There are some manufacturing processes where there might be a unique identifier with product attributes that you want labeled at the time of manufacturing,” says Moore. In those situations, a robotic palletizer can be used to take cartons, or a layer of cartons, from multiple lines to build pallet loads. In other situations, bump turners can be installed in the conveyor line to turn and orient cases prior to reaching the palletizer. “This does affect the utilization of the palletizer,” says Moore, “but it can be more efficient than manual palletizing.”

Moore also sees load building beginning to play a role as manufacturers with a limited number of SKUs look for more efficient ways to get their products from low-cost manufacturing areas to U.S. ports and then on to a distribution center. Rather than crossdock the cartons, which is common today, “the trend is to limit the number of SKUs loaded into an import container,” says Moore. “When the container hits the port, the cartons go onto a conveyor belt and then to a palletizer where they're built into unitized loads that can be putaway on pallets in a DC.”

Optimize cartons: Efficient load building actually begins with the cartonization process, says Eric Lamphier, senior director of product management for Manhattan Associates (770-955-7070). “When you think about load building you start with the basics of downloading an order, putting the pieces of that order into cartons, loading the cartons onto a pallet and ultimately loading the pallets into a trailer in sequence.” A cartonization application looks at all the pieces of an order and figures out the most efficient way to pack those items in the fewest cartons. “The application not only looks at the size and weight of products,” says Lamphier, “it can find ways to use certain products as dunnage that can cushion harder or fragile items.” A cartonization solution also looks for usable cavities that can nest together, like packing lampshades or garbage cans.

Build store-ready pallets: In Europe, where stores are small and backroom storage is almost non-existent, retailers are increasingly looking for pallets and roll carts loaded with product designated for a specific department or even an aisle location in a store.

While that may increase the cost of filling an order in the warehouse, those costs are off-set by reduced stocking costs in the retail store, says Donal MacDaid, vice president of marketing for Aldata (404-355-3220). “They are asking to have pallets and roll cages stocked and loaded onto the truck based on how the store is laid out,” says MacDaid.

By integrating a store's planogram into a WMS, the solution can direct pick according to a store location. The next level is to integrate picking operations with voice and imaging tools. “The system can tell the operator what item to pick,” says MacDaid. “Meanwhile, the operator can see a 3D image on his RF device of the load he's building so he knows exactly where to put the product.”

While the scenario described by MacDaid is most common in Europe, U.S. retailers that are highly replenishment-driven are also looking for store-friendly pallets and totes. “We work with one retailer that uses our system to pick to totes that are going to a specific location in a retail store,” says Chad Collins, vice president of global strategy for HighJump Software (800-328-3271). “There will typically be a bar code for the store operations and human readable information that will include a store number, a department and a specific aisle location.”

Optimize the trailer: If filling totes and containers and loading them onto pallets is the first step to efficient load building, the next step is building efficient trailer loads. Today's WMS can optimize loading based on a variety of constraints including the cube of the trailer, whether or not the pallets are stackable, and how the load is distributed over the truck axles, according to Kelly Killingsworth, a senior director at Manhattan Associates (770-955-7070). “We're also seeing customers in the food and grocery industry sequencing loads based on the temperature zones and compartments in a trailer,” says Killingsworth. “The system will direct loading so that frozen food goes in the nose of the trailer, and refrigerated foods go in the mid-section.”

For distributors with route deliveries, WMS can be used to load a delivery truck according to the preferences of the driver. “Drivers who are selling off their trucks want quick access to their inventory,” says HighJump's Collins. “The WMS can maintain the profiles of individual drivers, and then utilize rules sets to make sure that the right product is loaded in the right location inside the trailer.”

Build a load plan: With fuel prices increasing and the number of drivers decreasing, getting the most bang for your transportation buck is an imperative. TMS solutions consider constraints like inventory on hand, ship dates, delivery deadlines, carrier rates and equipment availability. “A TMS optimization tool will look at all combinations of orders, and then choose the combination that meets the requirements at the lowest cost,” says Bill Pritz, vice president and general manager for Logility's Transportation Group (800-762-5207).

Convert LTL to F/T: Smaller and more frequent deliveries have become a fact of life for many retailers. While that strategy keeps the inventory fresh and eliminates the need for storage rooms it also has the potential to raise shipping costs. One way to combat that is to take control of inbound logistics and combine less-than-truckload (LTL) shipments into full truckload (F/T) shipments. The key to doing that successfully, says Matthew Menner, senior vice president, sales and alliances for Transplace (972-731-4500), is to work with vendors to get detailed and accurate information about quantities and delivery dates, and then use TMS functionality to arrange for multi-stop pickups at vendors located near one another or along a route.

“We've seen retailers save from 3% to 4% on the low end and up to 20% at the top end after implementing that strategy,” says Menner. “The best candidates are mid-tier or better companies with more than $150 million a year in sales. They're going to have the kinds of shipping volume that make this strategy feasible.”