How many times do we see damaged products at our doorstep being delivered by e-commerce companies or really bad courier services? Sometimes? And why does that happen? Many would already know. Damaged in transit, but the products remain safe inside double cardboard and wooden boxes which makes it worth the effort. But what happens when industrial production is transported through far seas, railway and air. The goods today still get damaged because of the tendency of the cardboard boxes to lose shape due to varied temperature, forces and movements. Thereby damaging the products by shocks, mishandling, own weight and unavoidable physical forces. Corrugated/Cardboard boxes absorb moisture in humid and rainy conditions which adds weight and loses strength and shape which destroys the rigidity of the cardboard box.
In a robustly growing market, $65billion is lost each year in India due to inefficient logistic supply chain systems out of which transit packaging plays a substantial role from 15-20%. So, what is the solution?
The breakage of expensive products getting damaged is very common since man started transporting goods to far places. Not to mention the fragile ones too which are more prone to such damage. Like ceramic and stone tiles, glass, artefacts, soft materials, electronics, and many more. So here is the engineering and design thinking solution that enables division of the weight of different boxes to their own structures and avoiding passing on to the other adjacent boxes. This solves most of the physical force problem.
Metalogi engineered a lightweight cage pallet – metcase to use for industrial logistics in international and domestic transportation, it ensures that each product goes safely without any transit load and pressure. It’s made with varied thickness and different grades of steel at different load points giving it high engineered strength to bear high forces. Each metcase is auto-locked to the below metcase to maintain position and unity through the transit. While using metcase with the cardboard boxes, the boxes may lose their structure due to different climate conditions but it is not transferred to the inside material stored as the metal engineered pallet cases which use precision engineering does not let the load pass on to the other boxes.
Each square inch of engineering involves constant testing and rigorous thinking to ensure the damage is minimal to zero in case of heavyweight inventories like automobiles, industrial parts and FMCG items where weight plays a very important role as these products are also transported overseas for export markets in large scale. Each kilogram of weight of pallet and damage adds to more transit cost and damage.
Few things we always keep in mind while designing a pallet for a manufacturer. With stringent tests and engineering science, we take the entire pallet design process to a new level.
Stackability: We ensure when the metcases are stacked, they do not move or they might shift and damage humans or any other adjacent material lying in the vehicle or the wall of the vehicle. Autolock feature makes it very efficient to curb any sudden shifts or misalignments.
Structural Rigidity: Once they are stacked onto one another it helps us understand if the sideway pressure or pressure due to gravity will harm any horizontal or vertical parts which enclose the entire pallet case.
Material Load Containment: With our internal tests before each design passes, the pallets are loaded with actual weights, are thrown, mishandled and put to pressures with other pallet cases. This multi testing approach helps in knowing if any portion is withholding the material weight well. Corners and joints are the major areas as they hold most of the structural welds.
Easy to load and unload: With fair know-how of the forklift sizes and patterns across the globe the loading and unloading have been made very smooth with a size we have learned after many iterations. Easy access to the bottom clamping area with due testing ensures it is always accessible faster and precisely when huge loads are to be laden on the pallet cases.
Simulation on engineering software tools: To make it more advanced we have deployed a more insightful data study tool which reads the impact points on the product pallet ensuring us to see what we didn’t see. Using technology to find more competitive solutions for our long time clients.
There is a right amount of science and engineering that we have to commit to because no small mistake can be overlooked. One small mistake is equal to a million times in logistic pallet design. So we partner and research with our clients on their long term needs and help them mitigate through constant design thinking and iterations to help them find and deploy a right scalable solution.
To know more do find us here and collaborate on your problem-solving.
