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Motorola trims packaging, plastics

Three molded pulp trays and new generic corrugated cartons help Personal Communications Systems establish global standard and save big.

Three trays, with difficult forming details and die cuts, serve to hold all of Motorola's Personal Communications products1;aro
Three trays, with difficult forming details and die cuts, serve to hold all of Motorola's Personal Communications products1;aro

Motorola has already won an AmeriStar, a Molded Pulp award, and a WorldStar award, but the full story of the new global packages for its Personal Communications Systems products is still being written. The awards were made for Motorola’s three new molded pulp trays that replace about 80 previous thermoformed trays. The new trays hold an astonishing variety of phones and pagers, along with accessories and manuals.

But that’s only part of the story. As innovative as the new trays are, the company has also developed five generic folding cartons that overpack the trays. And these corrugated paper cartons are now loaded and labeled at Motorola distribution centers around the world using manual labor that in some cases replaces automated packing lines.

Because the electronics giant sells in virtually every market worldwide, developing global packaging standards with a minimum number of packaging components was a Herculean effort. Under the direction of John O’Connell, manager of PCS packaging, the company assembled a team of about nine packaging specialists that worked on the project over the last 18 months.

In the end, the project is estimated to save the company millions of dollars each year, although the company declined to make public the full amount. Here’s an itemization of just some of the cost savings:

•The trays, produced in Denmark, save about 30% compared to the previous 80 plastic molded trays. And the transport costs to receive the pulp trays only adds about a penny each.

•The E- or F-flute corrugated folding cartons, printed in a generic Motorola graphic, will be less than half the cost of the previous process-printed boxes.

•The company saves approximately $100ꯠ/ month in corrugated costs by going from double-wall to smaller single-wall shipping cases, because of reductions in the sizes of the primary cartons.

•At its distribution centers, the cycle times for its packaging lines were cut from 6 sec/package to 2 sec/package, and labor costs were halved. Plus the previous changeover time, required for each tray with robotic loading, has been eliminated.

•Pallet loads of shipping containers have doubled the payload to up to 660 units/pallet, depending on size.

•The new packaging is substantially “greener” than before. So it’s likely the company will incur reductions in fees, although unrevealed, in those countries that assess charges for packaging collection. According to Mark Woodger of tray supplier Brodrene Hartmann (Lyngby, Denmark), the disposal fees for molded pulp are the lowest for any packaging material, while those for plastics are typically the most expensive. Plus, he says, “consumers strongly favor those products [and packages] that comply” with the Green Dot packaging system.

Team PCS

O’Connell assembled the PCS global packaging team by assigning two engineers from the paging product line, one from cellular phones and then hired six new packaging specialists just about two years ago. Altogether, the team brought a wide variety of structural, graphic, and protective packaging experience to the project.

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