Packaging: Think Inside and Outside the Box

This is an excerpt of the original article. It was written for the September-October 2014 edition of Supply Chain Management Review. The full article is available to current subscribers.

September-October 2014

2014 marks the 10 year anni­ver­sary of the Gartner Supply Chain Top 25 ranking. This year we have a diverse set of large, global companies with mature, demand-driven supply chains. There are lessons to be learned from these supply chain leaders, many of whom have led their industries over the past decade.

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The Box: Is Packaging Optimization the Last Frontier for Supply Chain Efficiency?

“Packaging remains a major area of supply chain optimization opportunity for most companies.”
—Bob Delaney in 1999 State of Logistics

So here we are 15 years after Bob Delaney’s seminal observation, and after a career as a supply chain executive for several major corporations and working on packaging optimization as a consultant for more than a decade, I would say the total results are underwhelming.

As Delaney long ago realized, the lowly corrugated box has a huge efficiency impact within the supply chain. Typically the shipping container makes up less than 10 cents of each supply chain dollar; the other 90 cents is composed of handling, storage, and transportation costs. Yet, far too many companies still focus on reducing the cost of the corrugated box—the 10 cents—when their real attention should be on reducing the impact of the box on the 90 cents spent on warehousing and transportation.

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