Packaging. It’s necessary to get your products to your customers. But contrary to what many believe, a box is not just a box.

If you are like most, you work hard to cut waste and inefficiencies on your production line – you’ve implemented lean manufacturing and introduced Kanban, Six Sigma, and 5S Methodology. However, if your purchasing department is still evaluating your corrugated packaging based solely on price, you could be missing a big opportunity.

It’s very possible that those pennies you’ve saved have cost you thousands elsewhere. It is time to stop looking at your packaging through the commodity microscope and start looking at it through a holistic lens. This is particularly true if you’ve been using the same packaging and corrugated vendor for the past 10 years or more.

The corrugated industry is mature, but improvements have been made over the last decade, including better compression ratings, better flute profiles, increased performance, and improved equipment. If you are using a Mullen grade box because you weren’t getting the compression you needed out of an ECT grade years ago, it might be time to take another look.

You don’t know what you don’t know. If you are seeing excessive packaging damage, you are using the wrong packaging. On the flip side, you might be wasting money and resources on over packaging as well. Have you thought about what the inefficiencies and ergonomic issues in your packaging line are costing you? The total cost goes beyond that of the box.