A common expense often overlooked and poorly understood!
Today’s post is from our SafeSourcing Archives
When companies are looking to save money, they often look in places that have the largest spend, but also the greatest fixed costs. Sometimes the most commonly used items represent the best opportunity to compress spend. In today’s case, we are going to look at Corrugated Boxes. Don’t be fooled though by this deceptively simple item. If you aren’t intimately familiar with what your company buys today, especially if you have multiple Distribution Centers, developing a new RFP can get complicated quickly. Here are a few specification considerations to understand about this category that might save you some frustration before you get too far into the project:
Dimensions (Inside or outside?): Sometimes your invoices will give you measurements different than what you would measure yourself simply because the invoice gives interior measurements and you are measuring the outside. Make sure you indicate whether your specified sizes are interior or exterior. Also make sure you are consolidating box sizes where you can. If DC1 uses the exact box DC2 uses with a 1/16th inch difference, is there a good reason? You might be able to save a lot of expense by getting your DC’s all on the same program with a limited variety of box types.
Grade: The most commonly used measurement of corrugate strength is the Edge Crush Test (ETC). For example, an ETC of 32 would mean a box could withstand a maximum load of 40 lbs. Suppliers would need to know this requirement in order to gauge how to construct the box in terms of its flute size, number of walls, etc.
Coatings: Your intended use will determine the type of coating requirement you will have. For instance, food safe boxes may require non-stick surface coating, and boxes with marketing information may be colored white with logo printing. But for basic usage to fulfill your supply chain and distribution needs, the unaltered brown standard color is the cheapest, and the term for it is “Kraft”.
Printing: A print design can be both functional, or marketing related. Meaning, you may need certain marks for optical machine box loading, barcodes for tracking, or simply logos for easy retail identification. Either way, you will likely want to provide detailed drawings and artwork along with dimensions, and precise color in order to end up with what you intended.
The Usual Suspects: All of the typical concerns within any given sourcing project still apply, such as:
- Shipping terms: If delivered to multiple DC’s, you’ll probably want separate quotes per location. However, if you don’t need delivered pricing, obtaining FOB quotes can save you a lot of headaches.
- Volume: Unit of measure, lead time, delivery schedule, must be indicated, and under the correct annual multiplier.
- Current cost: Is it inclusive of any promotional allowances, taxes, freight, etc and are you asking for quotes to include all of the same factors for accurate comparison?
- Always run through a sample process before approving a large production run. A mountain of useless boxes would ruin anyone’s day.
For more information on how SafeSourcing can assist your team with this process or on our “Risk Free” trial program, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service Representative. We have an entire customer services team waiting to assist you today.
