Corrosion Protection for Automotive Export Shipments
The project is a joint venture between two contract manufacturers. The direct customer to Nefab was experiencing problems with rust and damage due to the packaging they would receive from some sub suppliers. As Nefab is a supplier of the customer in the US, Nefab was asked to come up with a standardised global solution to this problem.
The packaging solutions used by different suppliers comprised of an external protection such as wooden crates or low quality plywood crates and of an internal protection. This inner packaging included, in some cases, corrosion protection in the form of desiccants and VCI paper or bags (VCI is a substance that slows down a chemical reaction and prevents moisture from reaching the metallic surface). The VCI protection used, however, held a much lower quality than what Nefab could offer through its global agreements. The solution that Nefab came up with was a combination of using Nefab ExPak collapsible crates and higher quality VCI bags. This proved to be an optimal solution that eliminated the corrosion problems that the customer had encountered, and it proved to be the preferred solution for the suppliers.
The Benefits for the Customer
The customer gained several cost advantages through the Nefab approach, including:
1. Reduced cost with an estimated value of $ 250000 in less than 12 months due to the elimination of corrosion problems.
2. Saved transportation cost, such as, sending bad components back to the original manufactures and external companies for reworking.
Reusable Packaging Solution for Engine Parts Manufacturer
The customer’s Engine Plant, is a part of the global Engine group, and one of the world’s biggest motor manufacturers. The plant produces several different sizes of engines. The project brief was to analyze the supply chain flow for two sizes of crank shafts delivered into their facility by their crank shaft supplier. The initial issues the customer had with the existing crank shaft packaging was that the current solution was a one trip expendable pack. This produced high amounts of material waste on site, which was very costly and inconvenient.
The customer turned to Nefab due to their strong position in the market and good reputation as a packaging solutions provider. Nefab specialists performed a thorough packaging analysis and soon came up with a new design, which addressed the customers’ requirements. It was decided that an investment in a Nefab returnable system would be the most cost-efficient solution. The Nefab project team proposed a 12 mm plywood RePak T solution which was modified to fit the customer’s special requirements. As a result, the customer got a new, complete packaging solution: 12 mm plywood boxes in two different sizes, with dedicated internal dunnage for additional product protection.
The Benefits for the Customer
The customer is very pleased with the reusable solution and Nefab’s cost take-out approach, leading to significant savings. Totally, it is estimated that investment in Nefab’s reusable system will allow the customer to decrease the packaging cost by 62.5% during the project’s lifetime.
Moreover, the forecasted payback time will be only seven months. The main problem the customer faced with the expendable packaging, material waste, was completely eliminated. Other benefits are simplified handling and transport space optimization.