Big ideas were abundant when PalletOne’s Keith Reinstetle, VP of Sales, recently appeared on a thought-provoking PackagingDive webinar (click here to watch the replay), joining forces with pallet research luminary Dr. Marshall (Mark) White, Professor Emeritus at Virginia Tech and President of White & Company. The theme addressed how companies can think differently about packaging to protect their businesses, using a proactive approach to save money, improve sustainability and boost safety. Here are some of the “mike drop” moments:
Don’t Leave the Packaging Design Until Last!
Dr. White doesn’t pull any punches. “Basically,” he said, “the way we design supply chains today is one component at a time. That is a mistake.” When designing a product, like a printer, it’s essential to think about its packaging simultaneously. A printer should be lightweight and small because big and heavy items cost more to ship. Products like printers can break easily and need protective packaging like foam. This packaging should be as light and small as possible to save on shipping costs.
Also, consider handling and storage equipment. For example, products are often placed on pallets to form unit loads, which subsequently interact with equipment. He notes that load span is an important consideration in equipment design. The more that span can be reduced for pallet racks and pallet conveyors, the more money can be saved on the cost of packaging and the overall unit load.
Reinstetle shared that early in his career, he was “tunnel-focused” on pallets, but over the years, has learned to take a holistic approach to enable customers to unlock maximum savings. When you start to look at unit load packaging, pallets and equipment collectively and how they interact, you can unlock savings you would otherwise forfeit. Therefore, it is crucial to take a holistic approach from the start. It is a process that begins with customer education.
“Through my own personal experience,” Dr. Whited noted, “ we’ve discovered when we take existing supply chains, look at them holistically, on average we can reduce just packaging spend alone by 18%.”
Integrate Packaging Design into Your Automation Project
Don’t forget to consider pallet and packaging design when looking to introduce or expand automated handling. “If you don’t have your pallet and packaging suppliers involved in the front end, you can have a problem,” Reinstetle cautioned. He recently encountered a situation where the implementation of an automation project was significantly delayed because they had made assumptions about the pallet they wanted to use rather than designing the various elements in concert.
“People are spending a lot of money on these capital projects and you know, they really have to think ahead,” he observed. He encourages companies to engage their packaging providers in the design phase to avoid problems.
Unit Load Packaging Design Impacts Sustainability
One under-utilized opportunity to improve your company’s sustainability story is leveraging the relationship between integrated or systems-based packaging design and sustainability. The three pillars of sustainability are economic, environmental and human well-being,” Dr. White noted. “Those are the three pillars and notice how the supply chain operates in all three spaces.”
For example, attention to holistic packaging design helps reduce overall costs, providing an economic benefit. Similarly, mindful packaging design helps reduce material and energy consumption and waste generation, resulting in a smaller environmental footprint. And as for human safety, if there is a mistake in unit load design, people can get injured. “See how it’s all connected,” he said.
Sustainability is a “hot topic” for packaging customers, Reinstetle noted. It is an easy segway into a conversation about holistic design.
Reduce the Devasting Risk of Injury through Attention to Packaging
UFP, Reinstetle noted, appreciates the opportunity to visit customer locations. It allows them to tap “hands-on” insights into the application related to cost-saving opportunities as well as to identify potentially devastating risks. Some pallets are over-designed and present cost-reduction opportunities. Other pallets he sees are completely under-designed. While it is possible to drive down pallet prices, it is false economy to drive savings on a pallet that cannot be counted on to perform safely.
“You and I and the rest of the world agree that safety is job one,” Dr. White added. In his consulting practice, he acts as an expert witness when unit load packaging has been associated with tragedy. Accidents and fatalities can result if a unit load is mishandled, based on a defective design, or if the unit load is designed correctly but has defective components.
The key message, Dr. White noted, is not to put safety at risk by making packaging decisions in a vacuum. “I cannot tell you how often mistakes in design have led to people being badly injured, and unfortunately, deaths,” he concluded. “Safety is Job 1, and we can never forget that.”
There were many other insights offered. To listen to the webinar, follow this link. To learn more about a holistic approach to packaging and pallet design, why not reach out to PalletOne?
