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What Is Cross Contact and Preventing Cross Contact at Food and Pharmaceutical Storage Facilities

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What Is Cross Contact? Food and pharma products  are sensitive items that don’t always play nice with others.  The efficacy of pharmaceuticals and the safe consumption of foods can be severely impacted if those products are exposed to other products.  For example, 8 items – milk, peanuts, eggs, soy, tree nuts, wheat, fish, and shellfish – account for 90% of allergic reactions in the U.S. each year.  Something as seemingly benign as a pallet of bananas can thus pose serious health risks to the population if, for instance, that same pallet previously held a nut product.  The prevention of cross contact (i.e., exposure of one product to another) is therefore paramount at food and pharmaceutical storage facilities such as 3PL warehouses. Preventing Cross Contact There are many steps that can – and must – be taken to prevent cross contact at food and/or pharmaceutical storage facilities.  These include adherence to all related GMP and FSMA/ Food Safety Pl...

Everything You Need to Know About CGMP Warehousing

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If you sell food, supplements, cosmetics, drugs or medical products, CGMP standards and regulations are very important to understand and implement. Especially if you use outsourced providers in the storage and distribution of your products, ensuring CGMP standards across your supply chain is critical. But what is CGMP? Does an outsourced warehouse need to meet CGMP standards? How does a logistics company qualify for CGMP? And if you’re using an outsourced warehousing and fulfillment company, how can you tell if they are properly certified for CGMP? Below, we explore all of these questions so you can make sure you choose a properly certified CGMP warehousing solution for your business. What is CGMP? First and foremost, it’s important to understand just what CGMP is exactly. CGMP stands for Current Good Manufacturing Practice. In the US, CGMP is overseen by the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) and is a set of regulations enforced to ensure that producers of drugs, medical products...

What are the signs that Pakistan's economy is failing?

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Pakistani economy isn't falling or failing anymore. I'll show you how. Pakistan’s Current Account shortfall narrows to $579 million in first month (July) of the year 2019-20 as compared to $2.13 billion in July last year, showing a decline of 72.81%, State Bank of Pakistan Reported recently. The details show that Current Account Balance without official transfers shrank to $664 million in the corresponding month against $2.27 billion in same month of last year. Balance of trade in goods also plunged from $3.485 billion in July 2018 to $1.847 billion in July this year, whereas balance of trade in services also fell to $473 million compared to $517 million. Workers’ remittances have been posting a positive trend for last year and in July 2019 too, it witnessed an encouraging result as it increased to $2.04 billion compared to $1.982 billion in same month of last year. As a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP), the current account deficit narrowed to 2.5% in t...

How could we replace cargo ships (and airplanes) with a less pollutive way of intercontinental transportation?

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Let’s take the opening paragraph from the attached article from wiki - “The environmental impact of shipping includes  air pollution ,  water pollution ,  acoustic , and  oil pollution . Ships are responsible for more than 18 percent of some air pollutants” That’s actually rather good, considering that international shipping transports 90% of everything that you and I and the rest of the world use.  Ninety Percent of Everything by Rose George As Austin Bugden rightly says, shipping is the most efficient way of transporting large volumes of cargo around the world, and it’s the reason why it is less polluting than vehicular traffic or any other means of transportation. There’s another article out there that states one ship produces more pollution than all the road vehicles in the world or something similar, but you wouldn’t be able to drive those vehicles if shipping didn’t get them to wherever they are used in the first place. Car carrier - of whic...

What ERP is based for shipping and logistics?

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Enterprise resource planning software (ERP) combines various applications that facilitate the flow of information within an organization, making it a powerful tool for logistics. This software lets fleet operators manage business functions like product distribution and staff maintenance, and provides companies with valuable data at every stage of the supply chain. Here are three ways ERP benefits logistics and transportation. 1. It Optimizes Inventory Control With ERP, transportation companies manage inventories on a personalized dashboard, letting them view orders, sales, and deliveries from one centralized location. This allows for better decision-making: companies can make predictions about future orders based on previous sales trends. ERP also expedites distribution times. Research shows that this software speeds up order-to-shipment times for distributors by 23 percent. ERP programs come with real-time data analytics that provides companies with valuable business intellig...

What is the difference between supply chain, operations, and logistics?

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You go to a stationary store and ask for a pen. That pen was manufactured in a factory, located hundreds of miles away from the store you're at. Now you take the pen into your hand and write a few words with it. Impressed with the product, you google the manufacturer  ABC pens  - Using this as an example, lets define all the above Operations - A broad term covering every department present at the factory site enabling the manufacture of pens - human resources, power, water, maintenance, machinery, security, information technology etc. When the CEO says “Our operational costs for this year have gone up”, he means they had to spend more money to produce a pen per se this year as compared to the last. Supply Chain - Supply chain consists of a chain of suppliers - individuals, their factories and trucks(or trains). Lets say companies A, B and C   supply ink, plastics and lead to ABC pens respectively. Following constitute the supply chain of ABC pens A - supplier...

How effectively can supply chains be shifted due to tariffs?

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Shifting supply chains is a lot more difficult than it seems. As an example, if the United States applies new tariffs on China, but not on Vietnam, it may seem like an obvious solution to source from Vietnam. There are several problems that emerge. First, even if China and Vietnam were equally capable of handling orders, it would take time and money to make the shift. Companies place orders in advance and have established relationships with vetted suppliers. Second, one reason that so many supply chains run through China is that over the decades China has become adept at managing supply chains and supplying products. While other countries are improving, they often cannot match China for quality or scale (this, of course, depends on the product). Third, even if there is sufficient productive capacity in a new country to handle the diverted supply chain, there can be real questions about infrastructure – are roads and ports equipped to handle the new volume of trade? One importa...