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Giftware shippers made to measure

New technology at giftware distribution center in Italy will allow custom-size cases to be produced automatically, with less than 1% waste, saving material, labor, and logistics costs and enhancing consumer satisfaction.

Thun specializes in handmade ceramic giftware, with its trademark figurine the Original Bolzano Angel, created by the company in its early days.
Thun specializes in handmade ceramic giftware, with its trademark figurine the Original Bolzano Angel, created by the company in its early days.

Remember the last time you ordered a product from a catalog or e-commerce company only to have the item arrive packed in a box twice its size, along with what seemed like yards of air pillows, packing peanuts, or other protective packaging? If you are like many consumers today, you were probably dismayed by the waste. You may have even wondered if this type of inefficiency was characteristic of the company overall. More and more, packagers are becoming aware of this negative consumer perception as well as the bottom-line financial costs associated with using oversized boxes for their shipments. Transporting air is a costly proposition.


In Mantova, Italy, Door 2 Green Srl, the logistics and distribution arm of Italian ceramics giftware company Thun, has taken the first step toward alleviating this logistics loss and improving their customer satisfaction. In November 2012, the company began implementation of a new converting technology that allows for automatic forming, gluing, and printing of custom case sizes. When fully operational, the Freebox™ from System Packaging, a division of System S.p.A., will create a made-to-measure case for each of the nearly 7 million less-than-case-size orders that ship annually from the facility.


In March 2013, Massimiliano Cerini, in charge of technology installations and maintenance at Door 2 Green’s Mantova facility, guided Packaging World on a tour of the 35,500-sq-m (approximately 116,000-sq-ft) operation in Northern Italy. While the visit was conducted during the one day per week when the facility is closed for maintenance and restocking, the Freebox was still being put through its paces, as Door 2 Green continued to work toward full implementation of the system.


Shipments in the millions


Thun is a family-owned company, based in Bolzano, Italy. Established in 1950 as Thun Ceramic Works by Count Otmar and Countess Lene Thun in the cellars of their home, Castel Klebenstein, the company specialized in handmade ceramics giftware—its most popular creation the Original Bolzano Angel. Today, the company offers a wide range of products, including jewelry, housewares, baby clothes, and handbags, in addition to its handmade painted ceramics. Items are sold both in its dedicated stores—there are about 1,600 in Europe—as well as through its catalog and via its Web site. 


The Door 2 Green facility in Mantova distributes nearly 12 million pieces/year to thousands of customers in Italy and Spain. Located on several levels, the facility’s picking areas are stocked with 10,000 SKUs. On the ground level, operators use a pick-to-voice system to pick small, high-volume items. Levels 2 and 3 use pick-to-voice systems for larger products.


The core of the cavernous warehouse, however, is its sorting machine, a €10 million (US$13 million) automation system—said to be the largest in Italy—that manages collecting, bundling, weighing, labeling, sorting, and loading of products to carriers at 19,500 items/hr. Nearly 4,000 ft of fully automated conveying equipment connects the picking operation with the sorter and the packing stations.


When the plant is in full swing, products in their primary packages are picked and sent to a conveyor that carries them through the sorting system. A scanner reads a bar code on the package and sends the item to one of 92 double level stations, comprising 184 chutes. Under the current system, operators at each station, or chute, scan the items to learn which box size should be used and to ensure each item of an order is placed in the box. Boxes are then directed to a filling area, where AIRplus air pillows from Storopack are added to fill the box, after which they are sealed and ready for palletization.


Currently Door 2 Green is using the Freebox machine to produce three box sizes, ranging from 8 x 10 x 6 in. to 16 x 20 x 18 in. The full implementation of the custom box-making system is dependent upon the completion of specialized software from System Packaging that will calculate the volume of the items in each order to direct the machine in creating an optimized case size. The other component necessary for Door 2 Green to get the full benefit of the Freebox system is installation of System Logistics’ MOPS™ (Modular Order Picking System), a full-case order picking system that allows for automatic case picking and building of pallets with cases of different dimensions. At presstime, installation of the software and the palletizing system are expected in the near future.

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