Cooler News by KPS Global

After a pause in consumption in 2020, demand is up, impacting stock and supply around the world. Jeff Monroe said that demand is strong, and it's difficult to get stock at a reasonable price. As society settled back into routine and our lives started to normalize, businesses realized that they still needed to invest and plan accordingly for the future. Regular business picked up and even surpassed previous norms, making up for the lag caused by early pandemic disruptions. The demand increase happened very rapidly. Monroe says that both raw materials and finished goods are impacted by inflation. Current supply chain issues are rippling across the economy. “It's spiking lead times, and folks have to redefine their supply chain,” Monroe said. “We're fragile with how the supply chain was, and we're realizing now that isn't going to cut it.”We can see a prime example of inflation with the sanctions on Russian goods. Russia is one of the world's largest exporters of soft lumber. “Lumber has historically followed a seasonal trend, but it's not doing that anymore,” Monroe said. Regarding Russian lumber exports, Monroe estimated that “about 50% of that goes to China and other countries in Europe take a fair amount of it.” European spruce and European pine typically offset the US's consumption of lumber from Georgia and Canada. With the sanctions, Europe exports less to keep the goods for local stock and use.With the bottleneck of supply chains, it will take time for the effects of that to flow into the supply chain. It's difficult to predict what will happen over the next month and the remainder of the year.

Senior Vice President of Operations Anand Kulkarni introduces the first open front refrigerated solution to hold product temperature below 40°F all the way to the floor without using glass or solid doors to keep heat out of the space.

Now that KPS Global has homed in on the goals we want to achieve in the new year, we’re expanding our team to help us get there. One of the new roles being offered is the Marketing Coordinator position, which will focus heavily on content generation and collaboration with KPSG’s subject matter experts.

As the first COVID vaccine to be given FDS emergency authorization begins its distribution, many healthcare organizations have been tasked with a new challenge; figuring out how to store the vaccine at ultra-cold temperatures. How can healthcare organizations set themselves up for success quickly?In this episode of Cooler News, host Daniel Litwin is joined by Maureen Holm, Solution Sales Manager at KPS Global, to discuss how the company’s freezer and refrigerator solutions can help healthcare providers scale their vaccine distribution efforts.

To get a clearer picture of technology innovations and solutions in robotics in the grocery delivery and fulfillment space, Cooler News tapped Joe McMenamin, Director of eCommerce at KPS Global, for some perspective.

The pandemic's start was months ago, but the impact of COVID-19 felt throughout the national supply chain continues. And, as Jeff Monroe, KPS Global’s Director of Supply Chain explained, there are still many challenges to overcome. Early on in the pandemic, back in March, one of the first areas of impact was product sourcing in Asia. “During that interim period, we had to develop domestic sources to cover the immediate need,” Monroe said. “Several months into the crisis, this has changed. It’s been a bit of a lagging impact where we addressed the issues at hand, and, today, the issues are different. It’s not so much the inability to ship because of the pandemic. There are difficulties producing items because of the constraints within the manufacturing world.” And, with the pandemic affecting business’ employees, an outbreak can cause significant manufacturing operation issues. While some of the pandemic problems and challenges did level off, the steady demand for products met with decreased production ability due to work-staff reductions. This trend caused a chain-reaction of price increases that have yet to return to normal levels. “It’s a capacity issue, right now,” Monroe said. “The demand is still there.”

A June 2020 survey from BMC (Brick Meets Click) and Mercatus USA found that 45.6 million U.S. consumers were online grocery shoppers, a 6% increase from the previous month. With this new COVID environment, the demand for eCommerce solutions in retail and grocery, specifically, appears to be increasing with no signs of stopping. How do these grocers implement eCommerce solutions to meet the demand while avoiding the pitfalls that can follow such launches? Joe McMenamin, Director of eCommerce for the grocery industry at KPS Global, offered some food for thought and some solutions for grocers to consider. No matter the player or selling method, all of the various grocery retailers, be it brick and mortar, online or hybrid, require some means of cold storage. That’s KPS Global’s bread and butter, and McMenamin said it's allowed him to see what’s happening out there from all sides of the grocery industry. “This was a path the industry was taking before COVID,” McMenamin said about the grocery industry’s move towards eCommerce solutions. But COVID accelerated those plans. “The timeline went from the Fred Flintstone pace to a Space X rocket taking off,” McMenamin noted, adding that some industry players are still trying to create a strategy to deal with the new demands. On the other side of things, McMenamin said the players with the deeper pockets are spending the money to advance into a more automated and touchless space. “You see a vast array of dollars and sense, as well as integration, with all of this,” McMenamin said. “It’s a lot for grocers to adapt to, and they’re trying to react as best as possible.” Be sure to subscribe to our industry publication for the latest news, videos, and podcasts in the Food and Beverage Industry.

Condensation in a walk-in freezer or cooler can be a real issue. Business owners may see droplets on glass doors or pooling water on the floor around the edge of a walk-in cooler. KPS Global’s experts have field experience figuring out why condensation is happening and what do about it. Jason Bratcher, Director of Construction Services, West Coast at KPS Global, said a big factor is simply the environment. “One thing we always tell our service techs when the complaint has to do with frost or condensation is check the humidity at the store and check what the surface temperature is, because, to find the dew point ,you have to have the surface temperature and the humidity,” Constanza said. If the temperature is changing, that could indicate the humidity inside is an issue, not a problem with a failing heater. There also are clues in the strip curtains and door sweeps, which should be properly placed and sealed, plus the possibility that employees are not properly closing doors or something is blocking the air flow around the interior walls. “As condensation forms on the outside of the walk-in, it can often form in that air space between the freezer and a building wall, for example,” said Jim Constanza (embed contributor page), Technical Fellow at KPS Global. “If there’s not air movement in that space, condensation can form there, and it can form to the degree that the condensation will form into droplets, run down on the floor, [and fill] that space between the freezer and the building wall with liquid in a pool. “That will form mildew and bacteria, and if there’s drywall … that wall can become infected with this mold and mildew. That will have to be remediated.” It’s easier to make sure the walk-in coolers or freezers are undergoing proper upkeep. If businesses have a condensation problem, they can contact KPS Global to have a physical inspection and resolve the issue.

Even in the earliest days of the pandemic, the spotlight was on national and global supply chains. How would they hold up if the worst came to pass? Now several months into that world-wide crisis, Jeff Monroe, Director of Supply Chain at KPS Global, spoke about the challenges of supply chain management during the time of COVID-19 and how KPS found ways to overcome those obstacles and maintain integrity of the supply chain for its customer base “Like many organizations, KPS has a global supply chain,” Monroe said. “We had to think quickly and make changes along the way. We did a good job of staying ahead of COVID.” But Monroe noted, “We buy a fair amount of completed items from suppliers also impacted by the pandemic. First, the impact was on their ability to get parts, and now it’s their workforce. I’d say every part of our supply chain felt the impact and is still feeling it today.” While Monroe said KPS’s supply chain didn’t feel an immediate impact from the pandemic, “the most pressing issue from the beginning was buyouts (those complete product purchases from suppliers.) "The challenge we faced was a dwindling supplier stock at the reorder point. We kept regular communication with our suppliers to know what was going on and find alternate options if product wasn’t available.” A side effect of the tariffs KPS experienced in 2019 were some unexpected benefits in dealing with the pandemic. Monroe and his team were already engaged in finding sourcing solutions to mitigate the impact tariffs had on their supply chain. “Because of the tariffs situation, we started to dive into our supply chain a little bit deeper and understand our costs,” Monroe said. “We found some of our local suppliers could also get us many of the parts and products, or suitable alternatives, we needed.” These additional sources helped reduce tariffs for KPS and proved beneficial in navigating the pandemic.

KPS Global's Joe McMenamin talks about how automation in grocery stores is essential to their success.

KPS Global's Kevin Piel expands upon equipment enclosures and how the company stays on top of keeping energy and water management technology accessible and protected.

The first modern freezer hit homes in the early 1900s. Since then, modern refrigeration and freezers have come a long way; the laws of thermodynamics, though, haven’t changed. The way in which people treat and manage their walk-in freezers often incurs more costs for a company, whether that's in maintenance or energy costs, and it all ties back to thermodynamics. Research by scientists like today’s guest, though, KPS Global's Technical Fellow James Costanza, has made modern industrial walk-in freezers more efficient, longer-lasting, and environmentally friendly. Costanza first breaks down how energy flows, from a higher level to lower level of energy. He elaborates on the biggest thermodynamic challenges facing the construction of walk-in freezers today: conductance, convection, condensation, and radiation. These challenges have faced scientists and engineers since refrigeration began evolving over 200 years ago. “Historically the cold storage industry...has been relatively stagnant in significant innovations,” Costanza said. But he continues to explain how KPSG has married elements of strength, such as insulated panels, and elements of thermal properties to craft a single product (a “FUSIONFRAME system”) that is a significant improvement in the industry, for the customer and the environment. Perhaps the biggest challenge to Costanza and his team is condensation. He said condensation is “...the single largest issue related to storage of cold storage envelopes.“ So how do engineers battle the ongoing threat of condensation build-up, material deterioration, and mold growth? He explains the design in laymen’s terms, emphasizing how important it is to minimize condensation, particularly in food preparation spaces. The engineering group and manufacturing group at KPSG has pulled off a true feat of science in their innovative new design of walk-in freezers. Find out more about how KPSG developed the software and is playing a focused role in patient care by listening to the podcast.