Example #4 - Bulk Toy Distribution

The chairman of Tinaco Toys, Ltd.* has kindly agreed to collaborate with a noble cause which is to donate 1,000 of their world-famous football (soccer) playing toddlers. Although Sir Tinaco is a very kind person, he and his company would like to spend the money effectively. In other words, as little in shipping costs as possible.

Given that donations don't require marked boxes, nor they need to be packed in specific counts, the fill box feature of Quick Pallet Maker can be used for this purpose. These 5"x4"x6" cartons with one toy each will be packed into Standard unmarked off-the-shelf English unit boxes as many as possible per pallet. The goal is to ship as few pallets as possible or as many of the 1,000 toys as possible per pallet.

Input Data

• Package Shape: Rectangular (toy carton box) - select Rectangle from the Pull-Down menu.
• Units: inches - Select in/lbs from the Tools menu
• Carton Length: 5 inches - type "5"
• Carton Width: 4 inches - type "4"
• Carton Height: 6 inches - type"6"
• Allow all carton dimensions to be vertical to pallet.
• Carton (gross) Weight: 1 lb. - type "1"
• Case Count: 6 - type "6", although this value really doesn't matter
• Board Thickness: 125-250# B Flute - Select from the Pull-Down menu and the values will update automatically.
• Construction: RSC-Regular Slotted Container - default
• Partitions: None
• Minimum and maximum case dimensions: Use default values
• Minimum and maximum case ratios: Use default values
• The user selects the "Fill Box" option from the standard case list in order to fill the standard boxes that he/she has available.
• Maximum Slack allowed for Standard Case = 2 inches - Type "2" in each one of the dimensions
• Shipping Pallet Dimensions: CHEP pallet 48x40x4 5/8 inches- select CHEP Pallet from the Pull-Down menu.
• Default values for the rest of the load restrictions.
• Maximum Load Weight: 3300 lbs, which is approximately the maximum weight a Forklift truck can carry. - Default value

The input window should look something like this:

The program will start trying different primary package configurations while it tries to find matching Standard cases. This may take a while on some computers as the program looks through a database of standard cases. After this is done the application will display a list of pallets made from standard cases. Note that all the cases in the box list will appear highlighted in light blue because they are all standard cases that were filled with packages.

In this example, the boxes have different case counts, which makes it unpractical to sort them by Cases per Pallet. Therefore, it is more appropriate to sort them by Primary Packages per pallet. The Power Sort window can be called from the Tools menu. Choose Primary Packages per Pallet and then "Descending" as the sorting criteria. Quick Pallet Maker will organize the list as below. The sorting window should look as below.

Once they are sorted, the first pallet in the list will represent the configuration that saves the most in shipping costs while utilizing standard boxes. The standard boxes can be enabled or disabled for box fill by selecting or deselecting them in the appropriate table within the standard cases and pallets window.

* Imaginary Name