This case study paper is the result of a projectconducted on behalf of a company, hereon referred to asMidwest Assembly and Manufacturing or MAAN. Thecompany’s operations include component manufacturing,painting, and assembling products. The company alsopurchases a relatively large percentage of componentsand major assemblies that are needed to support finalassembly operations. MAAN uses its own returnablecontainers to transport purchased parts from suppliers.Due to poor tracking of the containers, the company hasbeen experiencing lost containers and occasionalproduction disruptions at its facility well as at thesupplier sites. The objective of this project was to developa proposal to enable MAAN to more effectively track andmanage its returnable containers. The research activitiesin support of this project included the analysis anddocumentation of both the physical flow and theinformation flow associated with the containers as well assome of the technologies that can help with automaticidentification and tracking of containers. The focal pointof this paper is on a macro‐level approach for the analysisof container and information flow within the logisticschain. A companion paper deals with several of theautomatic identification technologies that have thepotential to improve the management of MAANʹsreturnable containers
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