Returnable assets management: Antares Vision Group’s solution for efficiency, quality and safety

Packaging plays a fundamental role in creating a circular economy because it can be recycled and reused multiple times in a closed-loop system. This greatly contributes to minimising its environmental footprint and reducing packaging waste.

With the publication of the revised proposal for the EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation, the European Commission aims to increase the use of reusable packaging solutions in Europe in order to further improve the sustainability of packaging and reduce waste.

Returnable assets item (RTI) management is a very important topic for the food and beverage industry, and Antares Vision Group – with its solution for returnable assets management – can guarantee its partners that they will minimise costs and loss of efficiency in production, and guarantee the quality and safety of the assets.

Companies might lose up to 30% annually of their returnable assets in the supply chain. By tracking the path that these items take, we can expect to reduce the loss of assets by 30%-50%. Tracking returnable assets to limit losses is the first step to achieving a solid ROI by implementing an asset management solution. Next to that, there are many additional pain points that can be solved by proactively tracking RTI.

These benefits include RTI fleet management, allowing you to have the correct number of assets in the fleet and understand their location. Balance returnable assets inventory across locations, limiting the possibility of production issues and eliminating the need for rush shipment of RTI between locations. Proactive inspection and maintenance of returnable assets, ensuring all are available for use and have all the necessary maintenance, inspections and certifications.

But what if you looked at the tracking of returnable asset items from a different perspective? We believe that by combining the tracking of the RTIs and tracking the product contained within the returnable assets, you can develop a much richer data set that will significantly improve the return on investment and provide benefits to additional stakeholders within the enterprise.

By assigning the product information to the returnable transport items transporting it, you will immediately have a detailed view of both products and transport items within the supply chain. The combined view integrated with data in your ERP system will allow the tracking of products and RTIs at a higher level of granularity across the entire supply chain.

Once this granular view of product movement within the supply chain is realised, you can use that data to achieve operational visibility that was previously impossible. Of course, every company is different when it comes to the value that this approach can achieve. Still, every company that we have worked with has been able to identify additional value over just tracking RTIs alone by implementing this combined approach.

Let’s set up a time when we can review your RTI tracking needs. Contact us here.