Most manufacturers, distributors and retailers in the consumer goods sector massively use cardboard boxes to consolidate deliveries and receipts of their products. This is mainly due to the low cost and good resistance of this type of packaging, together with the possibility of recycling damaged boxes or those with no possibility of future use. However, even with these advantages, there are still some opportunities in the operation of these boxes that can bring substantial gains in the costs of their operations and which are often neglected by logistics managers.
A good example is the reuse of boxes. All supply chain links in the food and pharmaceutical sectors, for example, receive a large part of their orders in cardboard boxes. These boxes can be sold to recycling companies generating a small saving, or even be reused in internal handling operations, such as transfer between DCs or sending to POS. In this second option, the cost reduction is considerably greater, since the cost of buying cardboard boxes is completely eliminated until the conditions for using the original boxes are no longer available.
However, it is important to assess the impacts of reusing boxes on the operation as a whole. The misuse of the total capacity of the boxes can lead to an increase in transport costs, usually the main one when we talk about logistical costs. This is due to the fact that there is possibly an increase in the total volume of boxes shipped without actually having an increase in the volume of products. In other words, the vehicle carries more air inside its boxes. Therefore, it is always important to be aware of the alignment between the volume of orders and the capacity of the boxes used for delivery.
And does your company use reuse boxes? Can you identify the ideal size of boxes for each order? Great cost reduction opportunities can appear when observing the details of these processes.
