For ecommerce businesses facing the all-important Christmas peak, the combination of high demand, huge product variability and acute time constraints can create a packaging nightmare. Chris More, UK Sales Director at Packsize, suggests a simple way of securing process resilience.
The dedicated Christmas TV channels are listing on Freeview, so it’s time to check how prepared you are for the festive season peak.
For many ecommerce businesses the ‘golden quarter’, up to and through Christmas and New Year, represents a disproportionate share of business revenue and, if handled effectively, profit too. But this comes with many challenges, many of which reveal themselves within the despatch packing operation.
Variability is the enemy of fulfilment efficiency, and the festive season has this in spades. Not only is the required throughput greatly elevated, and meeting delivery date promises more critical than ever, but there is often a much greater range of goods being handled – some only seen at this time of year. Even year-round staples may be presented by the manufacturers in seasonal product packs of novel size and shape. Many more orders will be for multiple, apparently random, lines which need to be consolidated and despatched together, and no two orders are alike.
Meanwhile, the operational constraints of fulfilment are mounting: labour availability remains poor and its associated costs are increasing significantly, rising diesel prices are heavily impacting transport prices – which are typically based on ‘volumetric weight’, so size matters – and packaging materials aren’t getting any cheaper, and are increasingly regulated. What’s more, with regards packaging waste, consumers do not welcome excesses of cardboard and bubble wrap when the next recycling bin collection may not be until the New Year.
Throwing casual or temporary labour at the problem, training them to select the right carton or how to manually form boxes, insert void fill properly, and so on, is costly, time consuming, and introduces more variability and rework – even if you can get the labour. Reliability and performance at this sensitive time is critical, failure to deliver on-time in the all-important Christmas peak can do significant harm to customer sentiment, repeat business and ultimately, overall profitability.
So how do you ensure process resilience at peak, without breaking the bank or eroding margin? The solution to the packing problem, the boxing bottleneck, lies in automation. But not all forms of transit-boxing solutions deliver the versatility, scale and exacting size requirements needed to cope with highly variable product shapes and order quantities. An oversized box is fundamentally wasteful. ‘Right-sizing’ each box for every order makes the most sense – saving on materials, transit volumes and packaging waste. And doing this at immense speed, with high reliability – backed-up by a 24/7 service hotline – is the key to building process resilience at peak.
Automated packing solutions from Packsize can create boxes ‘right-sized’ for each individual order, to be filled manually or erected around each selection of goods, closed, sealed and labelled fully automatically ready for despatch. Packsize customers experience an average 40% reduction in box size.
Automated ‘right-size’ packing systems address many of the challenges of peak. They dramatically reduce labour requirements, often replacing up to 20 manual packing stations, and eliminate the issue staff face in recognising what size and shape of carton is appropriate, and how to fill it efficiently.
Ending reliance on ‘briefly-trained’ casual staff greatly reduces product damage, both in the packaging process and later in transit. Also, the need to procure and store a wide range of preforms or erected boxes is eliminated, freeing up space and funds. ‘Right sizing’ yields significant economies in use of corrugate, up to 30%, while all but eliminating void fill – often bubble wrap, so there are environmental and consumer satisfaction gains as well.
Critically for peak season, automation converts a highly variable set of operations into one which can be predicted and planned, so that pick rates, movements, staff allocation and other factors can be optimised to meet demanding fulfilment requirements. New products with different optimal package shapes and sizes are readily accommodated from existing material stock, offering maximum flexibility.
Of course, not all businesses need high-speed, high-volume throughput. Right-sizing solutions are available for all businesses, large or small, with varying levels of automation, capacity and throughput.
But it’s worth remembering, automated packing stations aren’t just for Christmas. Even off-peak, savings in material inventory and usage, transport, and labour provide a solid RoI case. Automation can be integrated with warehouse management/control systems, conveying, sortation and picking processes, bringing structure and consistency to an otherwise variable and unpredictable environment.
Automated ‘right-size’ boxing technology offers the flexibility, speed and reliability to secure process resilience throughout the busiest peaks – and, of course, the rest of the year too.
Discover how to survive peak season at www.packsize.co.uk
