ISTA Views

FEBRUARY | 2016

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15 ista views • February 2016 • www.ista.org > MORE ON PAGE 16 If you've concluded that you have the more challenging situation of supporting a large in-store program, but need to consider the potential dotcom order, you have another set of questions to begin considering. These include, considering how the customer delivery comes into play, like pick and pack operations, or combining shipments or using mechanized handling in other delivery streams. And you have to consider if you have any opportunity to control things downstream through your package design. This might include package handling features or integrated skids. Probably the most important question is determining what your target performance metric would be for your packaging system. In the retail environment, most items are categorized by like items (or grouped into classes of items). These similar items should be considered your benchmark and performing better than that group as a whole would be the target performance you want to achieve. No package is going to affordably provide 100% protection, but the objective would be to find the optimum performance based on the cost and acceptable level of damage. (Lindgren/Blanck 2014) Recommendations: Over the last eight years numerous internal tests have been performed within The Home Depot, its affiliated e-commerce companies as well as several competitive benchmark evaluations of top e-commerce competitors have been completed. Through these evaluations, three primary recommendations have emerged to enhance capabilities when designing and implementing successful packaging for retail and e-commerce business. Package Testing – The single most important factor when approaching packaging design is testing and validating the design through effective and relevant simulation testing. At the same time, most retailers set basic minimum standards for package qualification in order to assure that their standards meet at least some minimum criteria, yet do not artificially inflate the cost of packaging by setting too high of a requirement to start. Therefore, it's almost universally common for retail standards to be held to the ISTA 1 or 2, general integrity or partial simulation standards for minimum testing. Beyond the retail level packaging, the standards for ecommerce are usually ISTA 2 or 3, or a specified standard exceeding those requirements such as the Amazon Project Standard. But in the case were you're required to blend your packaging over the retail channel and e-commerce, the best option is to exceed the minimum standards and confirm your design against some of the more challenging aspects of the e-commerce channel. This might mean testing for specific hazards like clamping, stack compression or additional drop sequences. It's always critical to meet all of your minimum package standards. But if your minimums are only a general integrity test such as ISTA 1, further testing to either a higher standard (either ISTA 2 or 3) or additional test block (like compression, clamping or drops) would be necessary. Compression – In the more modern era of the retail supply chain, smaller package sizes, fewer pallets and higher density mixed loads are much more prevalent. And with this, varied forms of compression have affected loads within each channel of distribution. In fact it's very typical that many distribution loads are going out in mixed pallets or even floor loaded to stores and distribution centers. In this case, both vertical and horizontal compression becomes a major challenge. In addition, those smaller pack sizes and fewer pallets are requiring more clamp handling in the distribution network. These clamp trucks can regularly apply up to 1,800lbs of clamp force on a package. And packages are often unloaded with clamps, stacked with clamps and containerized with clamps. This causes multiple touch points in multiple locations. All this requires another look at how and how much to test a package. It's highly recommended to clamp at least 3 different locations with a "reasonably excessive" force. That being for larger items, at least maximum force, and for smaller items, a force at least as powerful as the ISTA SAMSCLUB6 standard calls out.

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