5 Reasons PDS is Essential to Designing Custom Wood Pallets

The Pallet Design System (PDS) is essential when designing custom wood pallets.

Certain wood pallet manufacturers who lease the PDS software can use this powerful tool to help their customers reduce both costs and product damage. PDS also helps increase handling safety throughout the entire unit load system. 

Often overlooked, the pallet is a very important part of the global economy. PDS is the tool used to design and evaluate this key component of the economy. 

Board placement is critical when supporting the corners of the boxes.

We came up with 5 reasons we believe PDS is a must when designing custom wood pallets. 

1. Time
   PDS is powerful program that allows trained users to input specific information about the pallet, primary and secondary packaging details, and the intended handling environment. PDS output provides key information about the pallet design and how it will perform based on the variables entered into the program. PDS is a tremendous timesaver as it allows pallet users to reduce the sampling and trialing times that would otherwise be required to evaluate and compare various pallet designs.
   
   
2. Accuracy of Dimensions
   Deck board and stringer placement can be a critical element for designing a custom pallet. PDS allows for precise measurements and locations to be shown on the drawings. PDS also allows the designer to move boards to accommodate certain unit loads. Having accurate and easy-to-read dimensions ensures that the pallet will match your specifications. One example of where this would help is if a customer is stacking boxes on the pallet. If the box is strong enough to hold the weight of the product, a deckboard can be placed at each corner of the box to give adequate support and reduce the need for extra costs in the packaging.
   
   
3. Strength
   PDS can give a strength calculation of a pallet based on input information. While the results are generated based on real world testing, I’ve found PDS to be best used to compare pallet designs. If we had a current design that worked well for a customer but they wanted to test a less expensive option, PDS allows us to compare the second design to the current model for strength ratings.
     
4. Flexibility of Designs
   Both block pallets and stringer pallets can be designed in PDS, however many custom designs can’t be drawn in PDS. What PDS can do is give us a baseline starting point for most pallet designs that are produced on an automated nailing machine. With over 1.5 billion pallets in service today, there are many possibilities of how pallets are being used. PDS does allow a designer to take a design and do some modifications to better suit it to meet the end user’s requirements.
     
5. Reducing Packaging Costs
   One of the most exciting areas of PDS is its ability to save on your packaging costs. By creating a more stable pallet, we can often reduce other types of packaging that may save more money than the entire cost of the pallet! There are many factors that go into the packaging cost of a product such as pallets, stretch film, paper boxes, cans, drums and support boards. One example would be where a beverage can company began using a stronger pallet that allowed them to reduce the amount of aluminum in their cans. By spending $2.00 per pallet for more deckboard coverage they were able to reduce $10.00 of aluminum per pallet load.

Have you ever used PDS for a wood pallet design? Why do you think PDS is essential for wood pallet design? Let us know by commenting below.

Post by: Jonathan Haynes, Sales Representative