United Natural Foods announced has implemented new technology and processes to shorten delivery time by over a day and better utilize UNFI data to deliver fresher produce, according to UNFI.
To shorten delivery times, UNFI consolidated purchasing efforts and transitioned to purchasing directly from larger Mexican suppliers. The product travels directly from the farms to the company’s distribution centers. UNFI has implemented thresholds unique to each item to accelerate the product movement through the centers and to retailers.
Since beginning the new process, the model has shown improved inventory turnover with less shrink, all in a shorter period of time.
“We know quality is the number one driver for produce purchases, which is why we are fanatical about freshness at UNFI Produce,” said Dorn Wenninger, SVP of produce at UNFI, in a statement. “In line with UNFI’s overall strategy to harness technology and data to serve our customers better, these initiatives allow us to remove over a day from our supply chain and provide a fresher product to our customers and their shoppers.”
To help ensure growers and suppliers are producing fresher produce, UNFI has also instated Share-ify, a quality control program that uses company data to make farming processes more efficient. The technology is rolled out in roughly half of its distribution centers with the goal to install it everywhere by this September.
“The power of the data we now have in our hands is immense,” said Wenninger. “Our new technology updates provide greater transparency in our supply chain, better protecting our customers and helping us to provide them with the freshest, highest-quality produce available.”
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