Crating Solution

Problem: Customer was using a corrugated crate to ship their 120LB diagnostic test equipment to research laboratories around the world. The crating system was failing in a many ways. In almost all cases, the unit was uncalibrated by the time it arrived. The crate involved a combination of foam insert, mounting brackets and wood inserts. It took 2 man hours and a fork lift to load the unit into the crate. The forklift was needed to allow the assembly team to mount screws to hold the unit in place. Almost every delivery required a technician to fly on short notice to re calibrate the unit at their customers facility. Peek Packaging was asked to design and supply a new corrugated style crating system with the following requirements:

Eliminate failures during shipping.

Reduce the weight so it could be lifted by 2 men

Reduce the assembly time

Reduce the cost

Crate needs to fit through a standard lab door

Easy for techs to remove from the packaging at delivery point

Solution: The first issue was finding out why the unit was becoming uncalibrated. We sent the unit to a drop test and vibration lab to determine at what G force the unit would break. This resulted in a redesign by the customer to fix a previously unknown problem with their interior mounting bracket. We redesigned the foam inserts to match the drop test results from the lab. We used top and bottom foam caps and replaced the wood crate with a plastic corrugated 3 piece system. The result was a design that solved the customer’s problems. The new crate system mounted onto a heat treated plywood deck was 50% smaller and lighter; thus, saving money on loading time and shipping costs.

Benefits to the customer: All the problems were solved.. The unit was dramatically lighter and more compact. Assembly time went from hours to 5 minutes. The system did not require a forklift for assembly which was a huge time saver. The most important was the elimination in failures during shipping. The techs could easily move the unit in the labs and unpack in minutes. The final crate system cost was reduced by 75.00 per system