It’s Not Too Late for a Packaging Resolution in 2011!

By Rob Busse, CPP- Chainalytics

Let’s be honest, “New Year’s Resolutions” are hard to keep and by April they are usually distant memories. Although we all have the best intentions to achieve these goals, we all usually fail. So now that we are a few months into 2011 and most of the “New Year’s Resolution” pressure has passed, it is a good time to reconsider addressing your business resolutions for 2011. Here are a few ideas to get you started thinking:

1. Think about things that your direct group can affect

2. Brainstorm ideas with your team. Think about any of the following:

• Ways to reduce operating costs (from practical to radical)
• How to maximize the efficiency of personnel and equipment
• How can your group practice sustainability, not just talk about it?
• What are some new tools you could use to be more productive?
• Your companies social responsibilities

3. Select the top ideas

4. Align your team’s goals with the broader corporate initiatives

5. Have a kick off meeting, assign team roles, and set some milestone dates

6. Then measure the impact

Since most resolutions fail within weeks, stay disciplined in the execution. Your team will be more confident at the end of the year when they can look back and see what was accomplished.

Chainalytics is focused on our customer’s bottom line. We would like to help your business unit win in 2011. Our packaging professionals can help you identify and implement cost reduction programs related to packaging, redesign pesky damage-prone packages, or make your supply chain more sustainable and easier on the environment. Email us to learn more.

Iconic Girl Scouts Cookie Packaging: Paper to Plastic?

By Eric Carlson, CPP- Chainalytics

For the Girl Scouts Cookie® purist, the new “Thanks-A-Lot”™ cookie packaging that is being tested in the Midwest may seem like the sad end of an era.

This new packaging design eliminates the paperboard carton by replacing it with a plastic wrap. According to ABC Bakers, the manufacturer of Girl Scouts Cookies, the new packaging will remove 150 tons of paperboard from the waste stream and save energy equal to 35,000 gallons of fuel, based on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Waste Reduction Model.

Chainalytics Packaging Optimization Practice, a team of Certified Packaging Professionals providing independent packaging engineering and consulting services, often suggests similar packaging changes reduce packaging and/or logistics costs to its clients. Had the Girl Scout organization asked us, we might have suggested this change as an option. However, we wonder if distribution and packaging testing was done to evaluate the impact of the new packaging on the quality or appearance of the delivered cookie.

Any time a packaging design change is made, due diligence demands that the new design be tested to assure that performance meets or exceeds expectations. Distribution testing to an internationally recognized ship test protocol (ASTM, ISTA, ISO) is highly recommended to understand not only baseline performance, but to provide some qualitative and quantitative measures of performance of the new packaging.

As a long-term consumer of the iconic Girl Scout Cookies, I can say that I never remember getting broken cookies. I hope that the Girl Scouts have done their cookie homework so that the cookies arrive intact to their adoring fans.