CASE STUDY NO. 9616
KEY WORDS FOOD JARS, SHRINK-FILM BUNDLING, GLASS-TO-GLASS
Gerber Products Co.
445 State Street
Fremont, MI 49413
Contact: Gary Ward. Tel: 616-928-2446.
Summary
To ship cases of 24 glass food jars, Gerber replaced a partitioned corrugated box with a partionless wrap-around corrugated box and subsequently with a glass-to-glass shrink bundle of low-density polyethylene (LDPE) secured to a bottom tray of corrugated. The reduction in package material by weight is about 60%, and the reduction in packaging materials cost is significant.
Action
Listening to its customers, Gerber has heard growing concern in recent years about the cost of handling and disposing of logistical (distribution) packaging. Customer concerns of this sort are reviewed and acted upon by cooperative groups of company specialists representing all the affected areas, including:
The cost of packaging, though not the only concern, is extremely important. Disposable packaging traditionally has been made of the lowest-cost materials available--corrugated boxes came into wide use because they cost less than wood. But in many applications, corrugated is no longer the lowest cost logistical packaging material.
Gerber was the first U.S. company to do away with corrugated partitions between glass jars, as well as the entire corrugated top, by adopting a glass-to-glass shrink bundle that confines bottles so tightly they cannot rattle and break. (In preparation for such a change, jars were redesigned to make them stronger, and surface coatings were developed to preserve integrity when glass contacted glass.) This change has significantly reduced the amount of packaging material that customers must dispose of.
The new packing method also necessitated a change in the way Gerber received jars from the glass factory. The old way was for jars to be packed in a re-shipper--a partitioned, corrugated box used first to transport empty jars from glass factory to Gerber; and second, after washing, filling, sealing, and cooking, to transport them from Gerber to food stores. Today, jars arrive at Gerber stacked in layers on pallets, with a sheet of cardboard separating each layer. Jars are swept off the pallet layer by layer and fed into the washing area, and from there to filling, sealing, cooking, and packaging. Pallets and the cardboard separators are returned to the glass plant.
Gerber has retained a bottom tray of corrugated for several reasons. For one thing, it provides a hard surface for printing of various product information and machine scannable bar codes. Equally important, a corrugated tray provides some cushioning and protection for the glass jars during order picking, conveying, stacking, and loading.
Payback
Reductions in materials expense enabled the company to recover conversion cost in an
acceptably short period of time.