If You Label, They Will Crush

[Andy Dingley]

I once bought an anvil and some welding goggles from Northern Tools. I didn't even get the bubble wrap!

[Charles Self]

Yeah. And not lazy. My wife isn't working right now, so she worked a garden, canned us about 50 quarts of green beans (not counting what we ate for months), did probably another two dozen for family, lots of other edibles, tomatoes until my mouth got sore from the acid, probably 40 quarts of tomatoes canned and remaining, I don't know how much strawberry preserves, peach preserves and blueberry preserves, but a lot. Plus zucchini, green peppers, red peppers, and a slew of other stuff. She also got some pick-ur-own apples and made applesauce and apple butter.

Sort of like turning into my own grandfather, except I never had a dozen kids. Actually, I guess they had 14, one of those early 20th century farm families (my oldest uncle was born in 1900, straddled two centuries within a few months, as did my father, who was born the same year).

Near Walton's Mountain (which doesn't exist), but, as my mother used to say, we had the sawmill and farm, and some of the kids got to college, but, as kids, none had a car, and there was a lot less noise and hassle, and money, around the house.

[Robatoy]

Why am I developing images of Wiley E. Coyote?

[Edwin Pawlowski]

Bottom line: it worked Good packaging job!

[Battleax]

I see your standards are considerably lower than mine :)

[Edwin Pawlowski]

Nope, my standards demand the product arrive intact. That is the goal of any package design. Once that is achieved, anything more is just plain wasted money. I guess you don't mind wasting yours on a pretty box that will get ground up on recycling day.

No damage = good package.

[Battleax]

Nothing is that black and white. In this case it was No damage = barely sufficient

[Edwin Pawlowski]

Perfectly black and white. No damage = sufficient. What more do you expect? Or want?

It is either sufficient of not. Like being a little pregnant.

[fredfighter]

A margin of safety would be nice.

[Tim Douglass]

A man picked up a beautiful woman in a bar and took her home. After several hours of incredible sex he lay beside her, exhausted and convinced from her responses that she had enjoyed it all as much as he had. Being a bit of an egotist, he asked her; "So, how was I?"

"Adequate."

"Adequate?! All that incredible sex and all you can say is I'm adequate?"

"Well, would you rather be inadequate?"

-- "We need to make a sacrifice to the gods, find me a young virgin... oh, and bring something to kill"

Tim Douglass

[Edwin Pawlowski]

I guess it was enough of a margin as there was no damage.

There is standard testing that is done for packaging and you can have it tested for NSTA and UPS certification also. Most of it is overkill giving a good safety margin. .

Some years ago a customer called me and said the packaging we provided failed their new drop test. I went along with a designer from our company and we met with his new QC guy and the president of the company that originally bought the package from us.

The QC guy went on about the testing and the failure of the packaging in the test and what the specifications and reasoning behind the testing was. . After a lengthy diatribe, he was interrupted by President who asked two questions:

Q. How many packages did we ship last year?

A. Over 50,000

Q. How many were damaged

A. None

President: Thank you for coming. The meeting is over and we will have no need to re-assess our present packaging. It works.

[Leif Thorvaldson]

===>MMMmmmmh! Calzones. Just like momma used to make. Don't believe she shipped any, though!*G*

Leif

[fredfighter]

I guess this turns on the meaning of 'sufficient'.

50,000 packages delivered with none damaged implies a sufficient margin of safety.

[George]

Ed has missed the point, you may not have seen it.

The box was much too large for what it contained - probably by a factor of three or more. Since nothing was used to bulk it out, it was extremely vulnerable to damage from the outside.

The box contained both a box of glasses and an eight pound piece of iron, both unrestrained within the oversize container. It's entirely possible that inertial forces acting on the chunk of iron during handling caused some of the problems observed. Impacts from inside also destroy the shape of the container, making it more vulnerable to exterior forces.

Keeping the contents from shifting and damaging themselves or the container is really important in packaging. The two ways normally employed to accomplish this were not employed. The FRAGILE labels placed on the exterior almost seem a joke perpetrated on the carrier by the packager.

Accidental success in no way justifies double dumb packaging, just as one swallow does not make a summer.

[Edwin Pawlowski]

What point???? The product arrived unscathed. There is nothing more to do. Sure, the package could have been better in some respects for appearance, but, it worked, You can't get it to do anything more than that. Since it arrived in a box larger than needed, do you expect the glasses to multiply? Be filled with beer? A cake to be in the pan? Ribbons and bows? You ordered some items. They were shipped and arrived in perfect condition. The contract was fulfilled and payment was made. Perfect! You had no loss. Life is good.

The only point is that you received what you asked for in perfect condition. Nothing else matters. You should have no more expectations.

[Edwin Pawlowski]

Exactly, but some idiot wanted a new design because if failed a trumped up "test" that was overkill.

In real life, you do increase the margin of safety as the cost of the product goes up. If, out of 50,000 shipments of a $100 item you had three failures, that is not so bad. OTOH, if you had that many failures on a $75,000 item, you should be looking for the cause. It is not always packaging. I know of one instance with a computer company that was going to spend $20 per unit on a package and it was not working so they had a $50 unit designed. Then someone put a 5¢ screw in the part breaking lose and cut the packaging down to $15.

[Battleax]

It's still a shitty packing job, plain and simple

[Edwin Pawlowski]

Does not have to look pretty to work. That costs extra. Nothing damaged, product intact, job well done.