This tree was planted on the Plumrose property in honor of Dan along with a plaque in his memory. We are so pleased with the way this honors Dan, and look forward to seeing it grow for years to come.

Last year, we sponsored the Charging Station, and we had so much fun doing it, we are right back there again this year! We wanted to share a few photos of our station at FA&M.

If you are at FA&M this year, please get in touch – we would love the opportunity to connect with you.

I have thought about writing you a note many times and found myself busy, but it is long overdue. I want to tell you what a pleasure it has been to work with your group, I would commend each by name but out of fear of missing even one person, I will only say Thank you to the group. We received prompt, courteous, knowledgeable, and professional help through out the entire building project from the field office and home office. In these times it is hard to find people such that I worked with in your company that put their heart into their work. Please convey this to everyone that worked on the Plumrose USA, Council Bluffs Job, JOB WELL DONE. Thank You.

- David Inman, Plumrose USA

Plumrose USA, with $500 million in sales and 1,450 employees nationwide, believes in investing in the future of its business. Recognized as the number one supplier of retail private brands in the United States for sliced lunch meats, the 75 year old company opened a new $78 million, 125,000 square foot, state of the art and highly sustainable sliced lunch meat facility in October 2012 to meet the needs of tomorrow’s customers. The innovative design of the facility’s processes improves production planning and adds roughly 25 percent production capacity to Plumrose’s overall output.

The journey began approximately two years ago, according to CEO David Schanzer, “we had been battling to keep up with demand for some time, and our employees continued to show great flexibility by working weekends to process orders and to service our customers. Therefore, we had no doubt that investing in a new modern facility was the best solution to safeguard the future of our business. The new state of the art, highly sustainable production plant has the ability to efficiently deliver the highest quality, safest sliced lunch meat in the industry today. It will improve competitiveness, product quality, and reputation and will support the company’s business plan for future growth.”

ONEsource had the great pleasure of providing full-service planning, architecture, engineering, procurement and construction services for this project, and we couldn’t be more proud of the facility, and it’s ability to take Plumrose into the future. LEED Certification is pending.

Contact us if you would like to schedule a meeting, or learn more about our show participation. Looking forward to connecting at our industry shows this year! 

2013 Trade Shows & Conferences

Merry wishes to all of you for a peaceful holiday season and much success in 2013!

by Pete Fehrenbach

The wholesale distribution business in the United States is changing at warp speed. The recession hit wholesalers hard; only the most robust, best-capitalized distributors made it through the downturn in good fighting shape, and now that they have emerged, they’re facing a flurry of new competitors and new technologies.

The biggest, strongest and smartest distributors — let’s call them the lucky few — are making the investments needed to keep pace with the changes. Many other distributors are looking for more affordable ways to stay relevant. And some are cashing in their chips and finding something else to do.

Brent Grover, Managing Partner, Evergreen Consulting LLC
image via Smart Business Magazine

“Distributors’ customers’ demands are changing,” says Brent Grover, managing partner with Evergreen Consulting LLC in Cleveland. “They want to be able to call you or access your website and find out three things immediately: ‘Do you have the product I need?’, ‘What’s the price?’ and ‘When can I get it?’ And they don’t want to wait around for somebody to fumble through their system and figure out what the price is supposed tobe.”

Sophisticated online sellers with roots in retail, such as Amazon and Staples, have starting moving into some wholesale markets, and those sellers’ technological expertise has upped the ante for traditional distributors.

“Keeping up with those companies and their advanced systems requires a big investment in information technology,” Grover says. “The traditional ERP [enterprise resource planning] systems that distributors have been using don’t necessarily have the capability to provide all of these options to the customer. So distributors have to change their business processes and their support systems to make that happen. And it requires an investment in IT that some distributors may not be able or willing to make.

“But I think most of them will decide that they like adaptation a whole lot more than they like becoming irrelevant.”

The new technological requirements are forcing distributors to come up with answers to difficult questions and make tough decisions.

“It takes capital and management acumen to make these types of changes happen,” Grover says. “In the wholesale distribution business, the companies that are not big and well-capitalized have three choices in front of them: get bigger so they have the ability to afford these IT investments, get very specialized so customers will deal with them for reasons that don’t have to do with technology but because the customer needs their specialized knowledge, or get out — in other words, sell your business.

Guy Blissett, IBM Institute for Business Value
image via Smart Business Magazine

“All of this pressure, coupled with the low interest rates we’ve been seeing and the fact that banks have money to lend, has led to a lot of merger and acquisition activity in wholesale distribution.”

Guy Blissett, a wholesale industry expert with the IBM Institute for Business Value and a fellow with the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors’ Institute for Distribution Excellence, underscores Grover’s points about the technological and economic shakeout taking place in the wholesale distribution business.

“We’ve seen the economic crisis drive many distributors out of business and damage others to the point where they’re struggling to grow now that the economy is starting to turn around,” Blissett says. “Unfortunately, some of those distributors now are not in a position to make the investments that they’ve been deferring.

“The key challenge that wholesaler-distributors face is simply continuing to drive their relevance in the supply chain. The traditional source of their value proposition — the ability to stock all the products their customers want and get those products into their hands quickly and efficiently — is still critically important, but it’s no longer enough. There’s so much transparency now with product pricing, product availability and individual company capabilities that distributors are having to think very differently about what will differentiate them over the next five to 10 years.”

The Game Changers

Amazon and Staples are the two most visible new players in the wholesale distribution market, and their technological sophistication is changing the rules of the game.

“AmazonSupply.com, in particular, has definitely had an effect on people’s psyche,” Grover says. “It’s not that they’re stealing everybody’s business, at least not so far. Our view of AmazonSupply.com is that it’s really for unplanned purchases of maintenance, repair and operating supplies for the noncontractor segment.

“Is AmazonSupply.com going to decimate anybody’s business? Probably not. Was it reasonable that the stocks of distributors, such as Grainger and Fastenal and MSC Industrial, took a hit when the news about the launch of AmazonSupply came out in April? No, it really didn’t make a lot of sense.”

Sensible or not, those distributors’ stocks did take a dive when the online giant came on the scene.

“When AmazonSupply.com was announced, the splash was that here was a business-to-consumer-style website appearing in the distribution world — and we all know about the bells and whistles Amazon has,” Grover says.

“Here they were repositioning themselves as a distributor, coming on-stream with prices that weren’t really low, but they were decent prices, and they were offering free two-day shipping for orders of $50 and up, which, I mean, that’s crazy, and a 365-day return privilege — a new feature. And they were offering a toll-free number to call during business hours for support, so you could actually talk to somebody at Amazon. That was a new thing. They’ve emerged with 14 different product lines and a half-million items in stock.”

Analysts who follow the stocks of publicly traded distributors overreacted to the news, Grover says.

“They reacted like, ‘Boy, this is terrible news for these distributors and AmazonSupply.com is going to come in and crush everybody,’” he says. “My personal view is I think that while AmazonSupply.com is the real deal and they’re going to be here for the long run, they’re not going to destroy anybody’s world, at least not right away.”

While Amazon is not expected to immediately cut a swathe across the old-line distributors’ business, the deep-pocketed gatecrasher has raised the technological stakes in the industry, and the other distributors will have to step up their games to compete effectively.

“The issue for distributors is that if they have an online portal, it’s probably something fairly rudimentary, a typical business-to-business-type Web experience,” Grover says. “The bar has definitely been raised by AmazonSupply.com bringing a business-to-consumer electronic commerce experience and putting it out there. For all of the other distributors, if they don’t have a good e-commerce portal, it’s going to make whatever they have look pretty bad. So they have to step it up.”

Blissett agrees that distributors will have to make serious investments to improve their e-commerce sites if they hope to compete with the new competitors moving in.

“Distributors have to ask themselves, ‘How do I sell my products to my existing customers, as well as new customers, using mobility, using the Web, using other channels of distribution?’” Blissett says.

“In some ways, customers’ demands are the same as they’ve always been — they’re just more acute now. So pricing continues to be key. Customers demand low prices. The difference now, I think, is that with more products being able to be purchased over the Web, price transparency has become a much more real tool that customers can use against distributors — if pricing is what they’re primarily focusing on.”

New Ways to Compete

There are several strategies that wholesale distributors are hatching to differentiate themselves in the new competitive landscape. An interesting new tactic is the use of vending machines to distribute supplies.

“This is a trend that’s just starting to emerge,” Grover says. “Distributors are placing vending machines in their customers’ industrial plants or in hospitals for nursing staff supplies. The employees use an ID card to get the needed supplies out of the vending machine.

“For example, in an industrial plant, let’s say a worker needs some safety goggles or some gloves. Instead of going all the way to the tool crib or having to fill out a requisition form, they can just go to the vending machine near their workstation and put their ID card in, and they can pick what they need out of the machine.

“It tracks who got the item and when they got it, and it also electronically signals the distributor when it’s time to replenish the machine.”

Blissett points to the use of data analytics as an exciting untapped opportunity for distributors to serve their customers in a new way in the future.

“Some distributors are looking at their role in the supply chain and the tremendous amount of information and data that flows through their organization and they’re realizing that can be a potential source of differentiation going forward,” Blissett says.

“They’re looking for ways to capture that data, do some analytics on it and turn it into something meaningful for their customers and suppliers. They’re starting to wake up to this potential and invest in it.”

Some distributors are envisioning that within the next five years they could reposition themselves as an information provider for their line of trade similar to companies such as IHS Global Insight and IRI Nielsen, Blissett says.

“They would be able to aggregate information from suppliers, information about customer interactions, as well as macroeconomic data and other information that they have access to,” he says.

“Their ability to pull all of that together, do some analytics on it and make some sophisticated forecasts and projections about where the overall economy is going and where individual facets of the economy and particular commodity prices are going — they could provide a lot valuable information by doing this.”

Economic modeling is just one area among many in which distributors could apply data analytics to create useful information for customers and suppliers.

“It’s essential, now more than ever, for distributors to understand their cost structure and all of the different activity-based costing elements of their supply chain and to be able to drive down the cost as much as possible, and then be able to go to their customers and have a fact-based conversation about that,” Blissett says.

“That allows a distributor to go in to a customer armed with a great deal of information and insight about their own cost structure and how things work, and they can use that to surface some inefficiencies in their customer’s supply chain that the customer might not even have been thinking about.”

Whether it’s in the supply chain, pricing, labor management, fleet optimization or customer segmentation, the opportunities for distributors to drive revenue to the bottom line via the application of analytics are many.

“We’re seeing many distributors make investments in this area,” Blissett says.

“As they get their basic data and their core IT infrastructure in place and they have either a packaged or a homegrown ERP system that’s robust and comprehensive and they can start to do some analytics on top of that, we’re seeing some exciting examples where distributors are challenging long-held perceptions about how to most efficiently move products through the supply chain and how to do things differently and capture a significant value along the way.

“Analytics is a potentially huge source of differentiation for wholesale distributors. Going forward, that type of role for these companies is pretty exciting.”

This article appeared on The National Provisioner online, September 14, 2012.

by Leigh Ann Johnston

Over the last eight months some of the largest companies in the United States, including several Fortune 500 food-processing companies, have announced sustainability goals. Publicly announcing s
ustainability goals adds accountability to a company’s sustainability efforts. Yet, when attempting to set sustainability goals, a company may ask:

• What do we want to achieve?
• How many goals should we set? or
• How do we make certain our goals are relevant to our business?

Below are eight tips I’ve found beneficial as Tyson Foods’ sustainability goal-setting process has matured. I believe our implementation of these tips has helped ensure that our sustainability goals align with our business and advance us in our mission of Making Great Food. Making A Difference.®

1. Establish sustainability goals unique to your business and in support of your overall culture, mission and strategic direction. Don’t treat sustainability goals as a “nice to have” initiative separate from your core business. Instead, design goals such that they make a positive impact on your company’s social, economic and environmental performance. Valuable and effective sustainability goals should enhance and benefit all aspects of your company’s performance.

2. Sustainability goals should be a reflection of your entire business. This includes not only the environment, but also social and economic impacts and performance. For those in the food-processing industry, this can include food safety, product research and development, hiring and labor practices, workplace safety, supply-chain engagement, product distribution, and community support. Give top priority to goals that can have a meaningful impact; are of greatest concern to stakeholders; offer the best return on investment; and have potential to build internal momentum and support.

3. Sustainability goals cannot be created or executed in a silo. Consult with your company’s subject-matter experts and external stakeholders when setting goals. Internal subject-matter experts know:

• The fine details about what they do and why
• How their “piece of the pie” fits into your company’s social, economic and environmental sustainability strategy
• Which goals they can easily implement to close performance gaps
• Which goals will require more planning, resources, and communication

External stakeholders such as customers, non-government agencies, industry associations and academia lend to the objectivity and integrity of your efforts, and can help make sure you consider every aspect of a goal and its potential impacts.

4. Ensure your sustainability goals are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Results-oriented, and Time-bound). In addition, your goals should be balanced. A goal that is unachievable can make your sustainability performance look weak and damper employee morale. An “easy” goal could be perceived as green-washing, which could damage your credibility. Set goals that can be achieved with “stretch” and that resonate with your stakeholders and their expectations.

5. Develop a detailed action plan for achieving each goal. Identify resource requirements, measurable metrics, timelines, a progress report structure and a goal owner. Even if a goal is designed to be achieved through a collaborative team approach, someone needs to own the goal and report progress. Moreover, think strategically about the resource requirements and timing of your goals. Give careful consideration to your company’s culture, leadership engagement, business trends and challenges, and current resource availability. It’s acceptable to establish different time frames for each goal and set certain types of goals in the beginning of your sustainability journey versus further down the road.

6. Once goals are set and resources allocated, empower your employees to take action and improve performance. When sharing goals, clearly communicate the “who, what, when, where, why, and how” of your sustainability strategy. Explain what the desired end state looks like. Give employees a chance to share their ideas and make the goals their own. The best opportunity for improving sustainability performance occurs when the people responsible for the day-to-day operations understand why they are doing things, accept responsibility for their piece of the pie, and feel they have an open door for reporting potential shortcomings.

7. Once efforts are under way, measure and report the progress made in fulfilling sustainability goals. Regular internal communication is critical for ensuring:

• Everyone maintains an understanding of the desired end results
• Efforts remain on track and do not fall short or become perceived as a “program of the month”
• Resources are properly allocated
• Adjustments, if needed, are made in a timely manner

External communications are also important but need not occur as often as internal goal progress reports. Instead, consider developing a formal communication plan that establishes pre-defined points in which you will communicate externally about your progress, adjustments or other goal-related activity.

8. Senior leadership must be the champion of your sustainability goals. Senior leadership can accelerate a company’s progress in fulfilling its goals. They can help ensure adequate support and resources are provided, and that sustainability goals are integrated into the company’s strategic plan and budgeting process. Additionally, when senior leaders have a pulse on the key sustainability opportunities impacting their business, stakeholders begin to understand the importance and value the company places on sustainability.

Goals are a fundamental element of a company’s sustainability strategy. They provide measurable targets that lead employees in an agreed upon direction towards the realization of a company’s sustainability vision. Without measurable targets and a plan of action, your company’s sustainability goals may be viewed as an afterthought or a “wishful thinking” effort.

How does your company set goals for sustainability and stick with them?

P.A.E.P.C.: Planning. Architecture. Engineering. Procurement. Construction.
Our favorite stories from the week.

 1. Tiny, Portable, Local and LEED Certified Starbucks Store

photo via FastCo.DESIGN

Last week, we came across this article from FastCo.DESIGN, about the new breed of Starbucks stores. The company recently opened it’s first “modern modular” location in Colorado, and it’s a LEED certified walk-up or drive-thru only store. That’s right, no setting up shop to check email or use the free wi-fi. One of the biggest draws of this new breed of stores is the design, which was noted by the designer as “art.” What are your thoughts on this new design? I, for one, really like being able to set up shop at my local Starbucks, or taking the opportunity to spend Saturday morning on their patio with good conversation and a latte in hand, neither of which are options with the new concept.

2. Gardening…at Work.

In an article from The Globe and Mail, Jennifer Lewington details how employees at Farm Mutual Reinsurance Plan Inc. has put a garden at the companies headquarters for employees to harvest their summer vegetables. Employees tended four plots, and donated the harvest to a local food bank. That’s not the only company to make gardening at work an option. Toyota Motor Manufacturing in Canada also has a garden on company property. According to Chani Joseph, LEED specialist in sustainable communities for the Canada Green Building Council, “If you have these gardens in the workplace and you provide employees with the tools and the space, this will likely reduce their stress and create a more enjoyable and attractive environment.” Does your company have a garden?

3. World Building of the Year Winner

The World Architecture Festival was hosted in Singapore last week, and the Conservatories designed by by Wilkinson Eyre Architects at the Gardens by the Bay Singapore tropical garden were awarded the World Building of the Year prize. The greenhouses are very impressive. Take a peek at  photos here.

 4. Green Roofs

Ever wondered what exactly a “green roof” is? Check out this video from Building Green TV.

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