Can you make a killing offa century-old wooden device? Jeffrey Owen might do that.
![Prince Of Pallets](https://magarticles.magzter.com/articles/6636/278201/5af307c0e0afb/Prince-Of-Pallets.jpg)
When Johnson & Johnson heard complaints in 2009 about a musty odor coming from Tylenol Arthritis Pain caplets, it retraced its entire supply chain to find the source. The culprit: shipping pallets.
The pill packages had likely been contaminated by trace amounts of a fungicide used to treat the 6-inch-tall wooden platforms, which carried them from factory to warehouse to retailer. The cost of lost production and yanking Tylenol and Motrin off store shelves: $900 million.
The lowly shipping pallet—a ubiquitous tool of modern commerce—has a habit of causing trouble. The wood harbors bacteria, spoiling a shipment of produce. A pallet cracks, sending a stack of televisions tumbling to the floor. In a fire, a stack of wooden pallets is tinder.
Jeffrey Owen thinks his Lightning Technologies, based in Oxford, Michigan, has the answer: a virtually indestructible, lightweight, hygienic and fire-retardant pallet with an embedded tracking chip. The Lightning pallet is made of wood, but it’s encapsulated with a polymer coating that makes the wood durable and easy to sanitize. The chip records everything about the pallet’s journey in real time: temperature, humidity, accidents and, of course, whereabouts.
The high-tech pallets have logistics experts doing cartwheels. “Today there’s no way to measure how the product is handled or controlled for temperature,” says Bob Spence, a vice president at Del Monte Fresh Produce. “And God forbid there’s a recall.” With a smart pallet, he says, “you have the ability to trace that product quickly and determine what field sold it. Then maybe you don’t have to go back and recall everything.”
This story is from the May 2018 edition of Forbes Asia.
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This story is from the May 2018 edition of Forbes Asia.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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