Issue link: https://cp.revolio.com/i/912757
14 ista views • November 2017 • www.ista.org Thinking Outside the Box, Literally – Ship Testing Products Without Packaging > CONTINUED FROM FRONT COVER responsibility for package design, validation and support for the entire product cycle from pre development builds through the end of the product life. The main components Packaging Engineering supports are printers, supplies and service parts. However, the main focus of this paper is centered on printers. Packaging Engineering has had several organizational changes since Lexmark's inception in 1991, the most recent taking place in 2009. This move created a group known as Experience Design (XD). The teams making up this customer focused group include Information Development, Serviceability, User Experience, Design Center and Packaging Engineering. As part of this new team Packaging Engineering was able to have more visibility to our customer base. Prior to 1991 Lexmark was the printing division of IBM. As such our test specifications were born out of IBM test specifications. Today's test procedures are in line with many of our competitors, major shippers and ISTA procedures. There are several routes that our products take from the factory to the customer. Using North America as an example, the following routes take place. The printers are manufactured in China and ocean shipped to California, from California the printers travel by rail to a distribution center in Southaven, MS. At this point the printer may travel several different paths to the customer. Some printers will enter the smallparcel delivery system; our focus has always been on these parcel delivery routes as these should be the worst case scenario for any product Lexmark manufactures. The printers may also be sold through third party resellers or sold to various distributors. In these cases printers could take additional trips by truck or air to other distribution centers and then on to parcel delivery, or deliveries managed by the third party resellers. These third party shipments were thought to be less strenuous than the parcel delivery system and therefore did not warrant a unique test, see figure 1. A potential gap appeared in the test specification after our inclusion into the XD organization. Beginning in 2012 Packaging Engineering started taking part in customer visits that were organized by XD. These visits included roll outs of printers to various sites. It was during these visits that the gap appeared. Time after time at large roll outs one of two things would be noticed. Either the delivery truck would arrive at a site that did not have a loading dock and all the printers would be unpackaged outside and then taken into the building, or the printers would be fully setup by a distributor off site, loaded un-packaged into the delivery truck and shipped to the site. In both cases the Figure 1 – Distribution paths