•Packaging can be categorized into two types viz.
(a)Consumer packaging, which has a marketing emphasis, and
(b) Industrial packaging, which has more of logistics emphasis.
A.Consumer Packaging (Marketing Emphasis)
-Consumer packaging design focuses on customer convenience, market appeal, retail shelf utilization, and product protection.
-Large containers and odd sizes may increase the consumer visibility but make poor logistical packaging.
•For example, shipping products fully assembled such as motorcycles results in substantial reduction in density.
•A low density package would mean higher transportation costs and greater warehousing requirements.
B. Industrial Packaging (Industrial emphasis)
-Individual products or parts are normally grouped into cartons, bags, bins, or barrels for handling efficiency.
-These containers are used to group individual products and are referred to as master cartons.
•When master cartons are grouped into larger units for handling, the combination is referred to as containerization or unitization.
•The master carton and the unitized load provide the basic handling unit in the logistics channel.
•The weight, volume, and fragility of the master carton in an overall product line determines transportation and material handing requirements.
•If the package is not designed for efficient logistical processing, overall performance of the system would suffer.
•Standardization of master carton facilitates material handling and transportation.
•Standardization of master carton is beneficial even in context of retail backend operations.
(a)For instance, in case of shoe store as the contents of each master carton are known, it is not necessary to search through many cartons for a particular style or size of shoe.
(b)Allows master cartons to be more efficiently stacked, resulting in to less backroom congestion.
(c)Complete identification of master carton contents facilitates completion of retail inventory and merchandise reorder.
•Standardized cartons are selected to achieve maximum conformity in increasing the density in the trailer thereby eliminating dead space in stacking.
•The end result of standardized master carton usage is substantial reduction in total cost combined with an effective material handling system at both warehouse and the retail store.
•In situations, when master cartons of more than one size are required, extreme care should be taken to arrive at an assortment of compatible units.
•These different sizes of master cartons should result into modular compatibility.
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