LAS VEGAS — Food Lion, Kraft and Inmar received a Reverse Logistics Collaboration Award, recognizing best practices in reducing the quantity of damaged or otherwise unsaleable grocery products, at the 2010 Joint Industry Unsaleables Management Conference held here.
The award recognizes retailer, manufacturer and service provider teams that have collaborated successfully to enhance "the state of knowledge surrounding model unsaleables practices and attacking root causes." The conference is sponsored by the Food Marketing Institute and the Grocery Manufacturers Association.
The winning case study, "Using the Data to Close the Swell Gap," presented how Food Lion and Kraft have leveraged data gathered from a number of sources, including package condition data collected in returns facilities by Food Lion's returns partner, Inmar. Inmar's returns system captures package condition data on Food Lion returns, including the reason a product is returned.
The system also captures store-level, category and specific item level information so that returns can be studied at a variety of levels. Food Lion took the uncommon approach of sharing this data with its suppliers, including Kraft, which it credits for taking full advantage of all resources and data sets made available to initiate improvements in category management, said Inmar.
