materialhandlingupdate PACKAGING
have a gap in the middle, but it would still be able to safely transport cereal boxes.
Wal-Mart made the change, and it worked. “That (tweak)
saved about 20 percent on the shipping case material required,
which netted a little over a million dollars in material savings in
a year, and all we had to do was adjust the glue nozzles on the
case erector,” says Rutledge. “We just moved them by an inch.”
5. “Rightsize” your carton lineup—which may mean
more, not fewer, options. Sometimes, companies try to save
money by limiting the number of shipping boxes and cases they
use. While that can save money on material costs, Stirling says
this often turns out to be a case of “saving nickels by spending
quarters.”
Many times, this effort to reduce complexity means that the
company is shipping products in boxes that are too large, accord-
ing to Stirling. To keep the product from rattling around in the
box and becoming damaged, the company often has to pay more
for filler material, and the product takes up more room in the
warehouse and on the truck than is strictly necessary. Stirling
has been part of projects where increasing the number of boxes
available from, say, nine to 12 has ended up saving the company
around half a million dollars a year.
6. Buy better-quality corrugate. While using a better
corrugated box for your secondary shipping packaging might
raise your corrugate costs, using a sturdier box might end up
saving you money overall, says Stirling. First off, a better-quality
corrugated box can provide better protection to the product,
which reduces damage. Second, with a stronger box, you can
stack more cases on top of one another, and thus, get more
cases on a pallet. This allows you to save money on storage and
transportation.
BUT DON’T GO TOO FAR!
As you make these tweaks to your packaging, be careful not to go
too far. Keep in mind that the primary purpose of packaging is to
ensure the product arrives at its destination undamaged, Stirling
cautions. The quarter of an inch that you shave off here or the
extra product you squeeze in there should not lead to a higher
incidence of product damage.
How do you avoid making that mistake? Blanck says that any
time you make changes to your packaging materials (especially if
you are using a new material), you need to test it to make sure it
will work in a distribution environment. He recommends testing
the packaging at both the case and unitized-palletload level to see
how it handles compression, shock, and vibration. Drop tests,
for example, will indicate how well your packaging can prevent
product damage.
Rutledge adds that it’s important to think about how all of the
packaging components (the box, the pouch, the case, the pallet,
the shrink wrap) will work together as a total delivery system. It’s
not about minimizing the costs of the individual components,
according to Rutledge; it’s about optimizing the overall system.
“That’s where the real success opportunity is,” he says.
