Trimming Excess Packaging Could Bring 10% Payoff

(DC Velocity – Peter Bradley)

Packaging may not be the first place logistics professionals look when searching for savings opportunities. Maybe it should.

When Jack Ampuja gives a talk on packaging, he brings along a visual aid: a shipping carton he received that's big enough to hold its contents several times over. His point is one familiar to most logistics professionals: Businesses ship a lot of air, driving up costs in a number of ways.

Ampuja, who is president and CEO of the consultancy Supply Chain Optimizers, says more often than not, the problem is simply lack of awareness. Companies typically select packaging based on marketing or other considerations without giving much thought to the supply chain implications, he says. As a result, they end up using more packaging than they need, creating enormous waste and unnecessary expense. He advocates with some passion that logistics professionals should become more involved in decisions about the packages their companies use to ship freight. Read more here.