While most people do not think about packing twice, anyone in the retail business knows how important proper packing can be. Good packing directly affects storage and shipping costs and can have an outsized impact on customer satisfaction. A neglectful attitude to packing often results in cost overruns, slower delivery, and wasteful use of packaging material, energy, and fossil fuels.
Careless packing can result in a customer receiving a large box filled with paper with a small item they ordered somewhere underneath it all. Yet, there is no universal approach to “solve” packing. Some businesses settle for using only specific box sizes—a solution that can work when dealing with a limited product range but is suboptimal for most companies.
Importance of Packing Optimization
The words “packing and supply chain optimization” are getting thrown around a lot, but only a few logistics companies have specific know-how to do it right.
Finding the best packing solution includes selecting the proper materials for packing, selecting the exact right amount of packaging (both under- and overpacking decrease supply chain efficiency), choosing the correct design for the package, and determining the right kind and amount of protection.
These tasks can be challenging even for professionals working in logistics. For a company running an online store, for example, packing optimization could seem like a completely unknown area in which they have little expertise. Wrong packing choices can leave goods open to the risk of contamination and damage while overburdening the supply chain.
Today businesses and customers around the world put a premium on sustainability, and packing substantially contributes to the environmental footprint of a business operation.
Packing Optimization Software
Luckily, you don’t have to be a logistics guru, as today more and more companies turn to packing optimization software to introduce savings in all manner of packing and logistics processes. For example, Packing Optimization Software 3D Bin Packing provides a full spectrum of options to increase packing efficiency.
With it, you can easily optimize your packing—by the number of packages, the utilization of the available space, or by cost. The Stack Pallets Tool helps plan how many pallets you need and to save space by using the optimal arrangement of items. The tool accounts for such factors as the maximum weight and height of a stack and provides an optimal solution in a matter of milliseconds. You just need to provide the dimensions and number of items and the size of the pallets.
Other tools help you try different box sizes and find the best box for the job, check how many items would fill a specific package to capacity, or find a missing dimension by using the other two.
The software is quite user-friendly and does not require any technical knowledge to use.
With packing optimization software, you will use the minimum necessary number of boxes, fewer materials, and less energy. It will decrease your operational costs and the negative environmental impact of the business—all the while ensuring the safe delivery of items.
