4 Areas of Focus during a Tech Center Evaluation

What is a Tech Center Evaluation? An evaluation by the Tech Center is an all-inclusive assessment of your current packaging systems. 

Whether this is a 2-3 day onsite comprehensive review or an offsite review of customer submitted photos of product damage, the evaluation can help solve any issues and/or reduce overall costs.

Here are the 4 basic areas we focus on:

• Pallet and Packaging Specifications 
  What are the packaging specifications, and are the current pallets built to those specs? Is the pallet the best solution for the system? If the pallet and packaging specifications are a mismatch, this can lead to costly product damage.
  
  
• Material Handling Equipment 
  What are the types of equipment this unit load will experience? Is there one piece of equipment that is causing issues and that might be bypassed? We see many examples of one chain conveyor or one palletizer infeed device that determine a pallet design. A modification can sometimes have a very fast ROI.
  
  
• Shipping and Freight 
  How are the units currently shipped? Is there a way to do this more economically or efficiently? Freight is often one of the most expensive costs for a delivered product. There are times when a different size pallet may save on LTL costs or a different size corrugated carton would allow a denser container cube. When we find these freight opportunities, they can offer huge savings and offset pallet and packaging costs.
  
  
• Client Input 
  This sounds simple, as we always have a point of contact that gives us the project overview. But we also ask for input from as many contacts within a packaging system as possible. Many times a long-term forklift driver has very good insight into lost opportunities. They see the problems every day and may have even mentioned them before, but most of us are busy with our day-to-day issues. Asking for input in a fresh project can bring out excellent insight and opportunities to implement solutions from the field.

Before beginning your next project, consider what a Tech Center Evaluation can provide you. These four areas of assessment could help you tackle your biggest industrial packaging challenges. The Tech Center Evaluation could help you eliminate damage in transit, save on material costs or reduce freight costs, and even save valuable warehouse space. 

So what are you waiting for? Schedule your Tech Center Evaluation today.

Post by: John Clarke, Technical Director