Genre: Promotion

Sometimes it 's easy to overlook that your distribution center is called upon to operate as a two-way street : Product heads out in one direction , but it also can shift into reverse and come back to you . One of the biggest problems with this boomerang effect is the time it takes for distribution centers to figure out what to do with returned goods . After all , the primary goal is to get goods out of the door . Hence , reverse logistics . As fast as you can ship out a product , it can be headed right back to you . The better prepared you are to handle such situations , the more smoothly your distribution center will function . The fact that many businesses are willing to pay someone else to take care of this tells you it 's a valuable service . And if someone 's willing to pay an outsider to come in and do it , why not do it yourself and save the money ? Time is the single greatest enemy to handling reverse logistics . Processes grind to a halt and distribution center employees are forced to research and make decisions for each item or product that comes back in your door . There 's a two-step solution for this : Identify the categories / reasons for return , and There are seven core reasons for returns : manufacturing problem service problem recalls end-of-life obsolete end-of-use problem under warranty Once you 've determined the core cause for return , it 's easier to drop it into one of six " asset recovery disposition " buckets : restock to resell refurbish destroy repackage to resell sell to secondary market , and return to manufacturer . Once your distribution center has developed working criteria for each disposition , it 's much easier for any staffer to handle returns . You 'll save time , decrease frustration , and get returned goods on the way to where they 're supposed to be . One Response to " 7 ways inventory comes back to bite you " Because it 's cheaper , and doing it yourself DOES N'T save money . Like everyone else , we have been feeling the crunch of the economy , and we were surprised to find out that using a third party logistics company saves dollars and increases reliability . The truth is that if your companies specialty is n't warehousing and transportation , it is cheaper to allow someone handle it that specializes in that field . They do it more efficiently and reliably . The bottom line is that if a company has years of experience handling this task for many different types of companies , they bring a lot more experience and lessons learned to the table . We have started using a company called Ceva Logistics , that has literally saved our company and our jobs . And there are several other companies that perform similar duties .