StopWaste: PepsiCo (Gatorade)

The Gatorade facility in Oakland, CA needed to switch to a more durable, consistent, and high quality pallet without taking a large financial hit. Since it loads up to 1,320 pallets a day, efficiency was paramount. However, the wooden pallets that Gatorade relied on caused lots of problems. Because the cost of leasing plastic pallets was the same as for wooden pallets, Gatorade was able to make a swap without incurring an increased expense. The only new cost came from replacing two photo sensors on the palletizer to properly read the new pallets, which was less than $1,000. But would the plastic pallets address the performance problems? To find out, Gatorade switched over one of their production lines and staged a 6-month feasibility trial. The results were so positive that a year later both production lines were converted to the new, more durable pallets.