Sneak Some Zucchini on Your Neighbor’s Porch Day: A Material Handling Case Study
By Alex Batty, MHI Marketing Communications Coordinator |@mhi_alex
Welcome back. Story time!
Growing up, my family and our neighbors all had gardens. And it’s great. Fresh produce is the best. I personally don’t like tomatoes – unless I pulled them straight off the vine, so now I have a tomato plant on my balcony in a pot as a throwback to my childhood. We had other stuff like strawberries and corn and squash, and it was great.
But you always knew when the zucchini came in.
You’d wake up in the morning, and on the way out to school, you’d see a weird mass on the front porch. Getting closer, you’d see the dreaded zucchini pile with a cheerful note:
“Hey neighbor! Thought you’d like some zucchini this year – we had some extra. Have a great day!”
The thought is great. Once. And then when it happens every other day and you are drowning in zucchini and the kitchen is covered in it and the freezer is full of it and your mother keeps the food processor whirring trying to find an efficient way to store it and there is green and noise and liquid everywhere and you DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO…
It’s a little much.
https://giphy.com/gifs/horror-omg-horrified-1iUZa41YxKQtaJq0
As a result of this madness, there has been a few… psychological effects. I can still enjoy zucchini bread (thank heavens), but to this day, I avoid any pasta or other dishes that call for zucchini because that texture is just… it brings on memories of zucchini for months. I’m not exaggerating. Every dinner for MONTHS had some sort of zucchini in it.
At this point, you’re probably wondering why I’m talking about this. It’s National Sneak Some Zucchini on Your Neighbor’s Porch Day and I’m having flashbacks. I wanted to see how supply chain might handle this little phenomenon. Because most of the problem is figuring out where to store the overproduced product, and supply chain and material handling is really good at that.
If you didn’t know, there are four basic processes in material handling:
- Move
- Store
- Control
- Protect
Let’s revamp our zucchini distribution process by looking at these four areas.
Move
Most staging is pretty simple and natural in the beginning: pull it off the vine, make a pile in the backyard. However, on the receiving end, there is no designated zucchini drop-off spot, which can lead to bottlenecks and damaged product as the zucchini is left in random places, like the front doorstep.
To actually move the product, it’s mostly carried by hand to each individual house (in bad containers, but we’ll return to that). Something with a large load area and wheels that can carry multiple orders would be more efficient. Try repurposing a wagon, wheelbarrow, or even that old skateboard your kid used for two days and hasn’t touched since.
Store
Once it has been received into the warehouse (my house) it needs to be stored. As a perishable product, zucchini needs to be stored at cool temperatures, and freezing it will extend the life. However, raw zucchini is and odd shape and processing it (chopping, shredding, etc.) before freezing will extend the shelf life and increase storability. Quart or gallon size freezer bags frozen flat take less shelf space (as well as being stackable) and can be labeled by date for efficient retrieval.
If you’re really into food storage, you can have a carousel-like system or A-frame dispensing systems (cans mostly) to make food retrieval easy, but if you’re just trying to survive zucchini-pocalypse, bin storage on shelving probably makes the most sense.
Control
This is the problem child in our neighborhood zucchini supply chain. As warehouse manager, my mother had no idea when new product was coming in, leading to resource utilization problems (we spent all day processing it; we cried).
Since the neighborhood watch doesn’t really look out for zucchini droppers, access control is problematic. You could put in a whole system to prevent the zucchini drops, but that might also start a war with the neighbors, so you just might have to let this be a little slack. (DON’T DO THIS AT YOUR JOB. BAD MATERIAL HANDLER. BAD.)
Most warehouses control inventory management through barcoding and RFID and other cool new tech that integrates with a WMS. But I doubt your freezer is going to have that, so a Sharpie and the date frozen will work just fine. Retrieve the oldest product first, and you’ll have successful inventory management. When retrieving product, you will also have to account for defrost time before you can use the product, or add in artificial defrosting to the process (I love microwaves).
As for labor management, just remember “if mama ain’t happy, nobody’s happy.” Just do what she tells you to and everyone will survive. She has a system and you will stick to it.
Protect
Here we return to the beginning of the process where your neighbors are transporting their abundance to your porch. I know that most of the time it is moved by piling as much as they can in to their arms, or throwing it in old plastic shopping bags, which may or may not rip when you pick them back up. This can lead to spills and damaging the goods, so a more robust container is recommended. Cardboard boxes on pallets come to mind, but if I saw a pallet of zucchini coming up the front walk, I might run screaming.
This is also the section where we should talk about ergonomics. When lifting your 20 lbs of zucchini, remember: lift with your legs. And don’t trip on the stairs.
All in all, using the fundamentals of warehousing and material handling can help you survive National Sneak Some Zucchini on Your Neighbor’s Porch Day a.k.a. zucchini-pocalypse. Proper inventory control may also help you prevent zucchini burnout and avoid my fate. This is my destiny: to use material handling to let all people enjoy zucchini dishes.
In all seriousness though, these fundamentals are important and applicable in a wide variety of careers. We have a great portal to learn more about material handling principles and educational opportunities that you can explore at mhi.org/learning. Without the fundamentals, the stuff that shows up at your house or your local store isn’t in good condition, and you’d be mad about that. Just another way material handling makes the world go round.
