Throughout the supply chain, materials movement (logistics) is a vital and operating-cost consuming issue. This is especially true in the beverage market because once a case of a beverage is packaged, it is actually available for the consumer; however, realistically, the case is handled many times before it reaches its final destination on store shelves. There is no value added by any movement beyond being placed in storage or loaded directly for delivery.
Moving beverage cases and pallets should be efficient, productive and cost effective at each step of the process. From an operations perspective, we need to ask what actually is involved. Conveyors, automated guided vehicles, forklift trucks and more are used to transport beverage cases or pallet loads from production to storage, docks to storage, docks to docks, storage to staging, and storage to docks.