DC Velocity - December 2016

As we enter

2017 and Burris Logistics begins its

92nd year;

I wish to recognize the many people and organizations we have been blessed to serve for so many years.

Our company and family are grateful. Additionally, I want to acknowledge the contributions of our Burris team members who have always put service excellence as a top priority. Our people are truly committed to continuous improvement and innovation and are constantly listening to our partners and monitoring the industry as a whole.

So what will 2017 bring? What are we hearing and seeing, and how do we plan to move forward? The trends and disruptive forces witnessed over the last several years, mostly driven by the highly informed digital consumer; not only continue, but seem to be accelerating. More food choices can be found in more places either fully prepared, partially prepared, in meal kits, and other forms. These can be found in more places including wholesale clubs, traditional supermarkets, restaurants, in restaurants within stores, emerging alternate channels, and delivered to the home.

Food varieties are also increasing rapidly. Increasing fresh, healthy, organic, and ethnic choices are major factors.

The speed, flexibility, and agility demands in
supply chain response and
execution is becoming equally
as challenging. The increasing variety of foods
coming from more origins and going to more
destinations with shorter shelf-lives complicates
traditional planning models. Optimizing the
perishable supply chain and finding balance
between on-shelf or on-hand availability and
acceptable shrink or waste levels is one of the
industries greatest challenges. Gaining access
to actionable data and increasing agility is
essential.

So how does Burris Logistics help? We first focus on what we do best, but enhance our capabilities to do it all better and faster than ever before.

However, working harder isn’t good enough, we must also innovate with our partners to do things smarter. We have a long history of operating as stewards of the cold chain and food safety has always been a priority. Today, with our partners we face the Food Safety Moderation Act together.

We have been proactive to move beyond a state of compliance, but to a higher level goal in commitment, processes, and tools. This includes enhancing our capabilities of time and temperature monitoring and providing real-time end-to-end visibility for our customers, attaining SQF standards, and more.

We continue to invest in fleet, material handling
equipment, and facility technologies and improve-
ments. Digital fleets and facilities and becoming
interconnected. We are currently working
with service partners to enhance capabil-
ities in providing solutions such as small
package deliveries or final mile to homes
to extend our service reach. We are also
developing new technology based solutions
around our customers’ needs in collabora-
tion with them. These customized solutions
will provide our customers with greater end-to-end
visibility in real time, by harnessing data from
multiple places, and making it all
more relative and insightful. At
the same time, we work diligently
to secure and protect this data as
we utilize it to automate processes
and decisions through analytics.