BY PETER BRADLEY, EDITORIAL DIRECTOR
PACKAGING
specialreport
That was
easy
(on the planet)
Customer complaints led Staples to
adopt a new lean packaging system.
As a result, the retailer expects to trim its
carbon footprint by 30,200 tons a year.
PARKER SMITH PHOTOGRAPH Y
IN THE MIDDLE OF LAST YEAR, OFFICE SUPPLY GIANT
Staples quietly launched what would turn out to be a dramatic overhaul of its packaging operations. At a few select e-commerce fulfillment centers, it began installing a new packaging technology that
promised to sharply reduce its use of corrugated and dunnage. In
marked contrast to past practice, those DCs would no longer stock
an array of standard-sized boxes. Instead, workers would create custom delivery boxes on demand, each tailored to an individual order’s
unique dimensions.
What led the office supply giant to make the shift was “the voice of
the customer,” says Don Ralph, the company’s senior vice president
of supply chain and logistics. With its e-commerce business exploding—Staples is now the world’s second-largest Internet retailer, after
Amazon—the retailer 12 years ago adopted what Ralph calls a
“strong perfect order culture.” Customer surveys in the years that
followed showed the company had made significant strides against
metrics like fill rate, missing products, and damage, he says. But
there was one issue that kept bubbling to the top: packaging.
“Customers frequently say, ‘Why are you shipping such a big box for
such a small item?” Ralph reports.
Adds Rod Gallaway, vice president of logistics strategy, global
design, and engineering: “The number one feedback item [from
customers] was the number of boxes and the size of them. We set
out to find a solution that would address that as well as be friendly
to the earth.”
NO WASTED SPACE: ROD GALLAWAY OF STAPLES HOLDS A CUSTOM DELIVERY BOX CREATED BY THE PACKSIZE SYSTEM.
