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Transport packaging: Turning data into dollars

Designers of transport and distribution packaging have known for years that the economics of such designs rest on a knife’s edge: Too much packaging and you’re wasting money.

These sample charts show actual package handling data for a package shipped from the 78727 ZIP code to the 94536 ZIP code, givin
These sample charts show actual package handling data for a package shipped from the 78727 ZIP code to the 94536 ZIP code, givin

Too little and damages begin to mount.

The only sure way to know how much packaging is just enough is to send a number of test packages containing expensive data recorders through FedEx, UPS or other real-world carriers and then analyze the resulting data. That’s a data collecting/analysis project that’s beyond the resources of any single company.

Enter SafeShip International (www.safeshipinternational.com). Launched last October, it provides via its Web site engineering-level charts, graphs and tables showing drop heights, vibration exposure, temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure and other transit factors that affect a given package.

Where does the data come from? SafeShip conducts about 1ꯠ test shipments per month through small-parcel carriers such as FedEx, UPS, USPS and Airborne Express, according to CEO Greg Hoshal, and has been doing so since June 2000. Inside each anonymous test package is a high-end transit data recorder from IST. That company, of which Hoshal is also president, has supplied such data recorders to packaging engineers for years.

After each trip, raw data from the recorder are automatically extracted, analyzed and fed into SafeShip’s ever-growing database. Hoshal says the number of trips now contained in the database numbers in the “thousands,” though he prefers not to release a specific number. The company has filed multiple patents on its data collection, analysis and dissemination process.

Obviously, enough repeat trips have to be made through the same routes to permit the users of these data to reliably compare carriers and modes. Hoshal is cagey about releasing what this number is. “We had to spend lots of money to find out the answer to that question,” he says. When pressed, he gave a range of anywhere from 20 to 100 trips.

What about accounting for variations in package size? SafeShip handles this by shipping test packages with three different size/weight combinations:

• Small: 10”x10”x10”, 6 lb.

• Medium: 14”x14”x14”, 25 lb.

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