Pallet Logistics of America From manually filling out Grade Sheets to a complete digital, and error-free solution

Founded in 1989, Pallet Logistics of America has established itself as a best-in-class pallet-related service provider in the Southwestern United States. Their full line of products includes recycled, remanufactured, new, and heat-treated export pallets.

Pallet Insights™ enables Pallet Logistics of America to achieve a new level of efficiency in running our operation. The Helioz team provides awesome customer service and is adding capabilities to help us better serve our customers.

Brad Cutcher, Chief Operating Officer, Pallet Logistics of America

Helioz Technologies created Pallet Insights™ - a business management system for the pallet recycling business that is cloud-based, functional in its capabilities out of the box, but flexible to allow customizations for a specific business, i.e. integration with accounting systems, etc.

Pallet Insights™
business functions

• Production activity
• Shipping & receiving activity
• e-Signature integration for delivery BOL's
• Business intelligence for business process improvement
• Identification of inventory leakage (with planned inventory functions)
• Many others

Pallet Insights™
solution capabilities

• Cloud based
• Electronic repository of POD's, pickup tickets, grade sheets, pallet specs
• Visibility to driver activity
• Visibility to trailer moves and historical activity
• Aggregate data from multiple platforms
• Customer Portal – browser access to place orders and visibility to activity and metrics
• Dashboards – On demand reports that present KPI data

• Access to Pallet Insights™ data via Power BI for
business intelligence analysis
• Access all sites from Administrator screens
without re-login.
• Manage activity from tablets on the floor
• Visibility to order schedules and workloads
• Flexibility for production entry – efficient table
entry
• Data entry module that integrates data into SQL
Server (or similar)
• Ability to interact with existing accounting
system(s)

Key Advantages of
Pallet Insights™

• Ease of Use
• Rapid Deployment – Recent site deployment completed in one (1) day (20 users)
• Total flexibility of Helioz to customize Pallet Insights™ promptly at a reasonable cost.
• Insights are compatible with browsers on Microsoft® Windows, Apple® macOS, Apple iOS and Google® Android web browsers. No proprietary or vendor-required hardware.
• No on-site server requirement or related staffing requirements.

As one of the biggest pallet recycling businesses in the USA, Pallet Logistics of America operated on multiple sites and needed help tracking their business. They chose the Pallet Insights™ solution because of its existing features, but also because of its enhancements possibilities.

Apart from standard modules, Helioz Technologies created additional modules that suited Pallet Logistics of America’s needs

Some of the Pallet Insights™ modules that Pallet Logistics of America is using for improving their business:

01 Customer portal

Customers can track Shipments / Collection activities and get insight into the most important parts of the business.

Key features of the Customer Portal:
• Request Service – Customers can request a pickup or delivery
• Activity Details – showing all Collections/Shipments with related data and status
• Reports – Customers can generate two different types of the report allowing them to track the most important activities and other key parameters related to the business
• Pallet Logistics of America Contacts – shows a list of all defined Contacts
• Share Feedback – this option allows Customers to give a compliment or to share a concern with the Pallet Logistics of America Contacts

02 Integration with Microsoft Dynamics 365

Pallet Logistics of America uses Microsoft Dynamics 365 (previously known as Microsoft Dynamics NAV) to streamline the business operations and activities. Using the Microsoft Dynamics APIs, Helioz created an “adapter” that allows users to import/update Sales Orders data inside Pallet Insights™ and import data back to Microsoft Dynamics 365.

Pallet Insights integrates accounting, ERP, payroll, pallet tracking and pallet design applications including Microsoft Dynamics™ NAV, Sage®, Paycom®, e4score™ EZTrack™, NWPCA’s Pallet Design System™ (PDS), and any others with an available API.


Pallet Insights™ Enhancements
for Pallet Logistics of America

Pallet Logistics of America has requested a phased
plan to enhance Insights in several areas:

Digital Grade Sheets

Objective: Allow operators to enter grade sheets digitally in real-time, thus eliminating a step and reducing potential data entry errors.

Digitization of Production Activity

Objective: Bar code Scans, production of employees, stacking & sorting.

Perpetual Daily Inventories

Objectives:
1) Prepare functionality to maintain a perpetual inventory reconciliation every day, i.e., X pallets came in during the day/week/month, Y was repaired, and Z was shipped out.
2) Identify sources of inventory leakage to facilitate corrective action.

Paycom Payroll Integration

Objective: Synchronize Pallet Logistics of America associate hours data from Pallet Insights to Paycom.

Consolidated Invoicing

Objective: An enhancement that allows Pallet Logistics of America’s users to consolidate, create and approve invoices on the weekly or monthly basis.

Sales Grade Code Dashboard

Objective: This enhancement allows the user (scheduler) to plan future sales orders and their items, with a detailed view in the total number of scheduled items for each site/company.

Helioz licensed and deployed Pallet Insights™ at twelve (12) Pallet Logistics of America sites during seven months implementation process. The entire process was done in five sprints so far.

During Sprint 1, we integrated Pallet Insights™ with NAV & User Management Module. In Sprint 2, we developed SO process and established other Insights modules for SO process (Daily Board, Forklift Operator, Dispatch, Driver's view), developed Collections process & Street Purchase Order process and user documentation.

Another important area of work was to set up optimized backups, keep in track with system uptime, and create a Disaster Recovery Plan.

Backups

Backups provide an essential safeguard for protecting critical data / files stored on the server/database. Amazon Web Services offers backup settings that can be implemented at a specified time/date (hourly, daily, every 15 mins, etc.). Helioz have adjusted the backup settings based upon the guidance and requirements of Pallet Logistics of America.

Disaster Recovery Plan

A Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) includes identifying the critical parts of the system / network and outlining the steps needed to recover / reconfigure systems in the event of a disruption.

System Uptime

Pallet Logistics of America has stated that their Recovery Time Objective (RTO) is thirty (30)
minutes for Pallet Insights™. Helioz achieved this RTO by implementing a fully automated RESET function developed utilizing the AWS API that will monitor the Pallet Insights™ 24/7 and reset it if required.

To achieve a cost effective DRP and RTO, we have agreed on the following assumptions:

• Amazon Web Services (AWS) will be up and available 24/7/365 in the region selected
• A mass outage of the electrical grid in the chosen region of the United States is a low probability
event and is not being considered in our system architecture or DRP.
• Redundant servers have been determined to be unnecessary to achieve the RTO.
• Load balancing has been determined to be unnecessary for the target number of users.

Prerequisites to be prepared for a Pallet Insights™ system disruption include:

• A database backup
• A virtual private server (VPS) with the latest snapshot
• A source control repository

Pallet Logistics of America and Helioz Technologies are in a long-term relationship. Currently we are working on more enhancements, and features requested by Pallet Logistics of America.