Here are some suggested practices for executing a time study or labor evaluation:

1. Develop a protocol or work instruction and seek review and approval from a few key stakeholders.  Those include professionals with industrial engineering experience, manufacturing, cost accounting, and package engineering responsibilities.

2.  Make sure all of the packaging personnel are trained.  Review/re-read (if needed) the SOP.

3.  Have all of the components readily available; this includes applicable labeling.  If gel packs or dry ice will be used, ensure that they’ve been preconditioned, as required and specified.

4.  Possibly set up a miniproduction line, unless one person packs out the shippers from beginning to end.  I might suggest that a miniproduction line would be more efficient, because if an operator is performing the pack out from beginning to end, they may be taking gloves on and off, doing transactions on a computer, and possibly generating labels.

5.  Test in live conditions.  For example, if they’re in an uncontrolled warehouse in Minneapolis in the winter or Phoenix in the summer, replicate those conditions.

6.  Evaluate several personnel, or a good representative population from the potential operator “pool.”  This may point out those who are really good and efficient and those who require more training.  You generate a bell curve of performance and determine how to optimize or maintain performance excellence.

7.  Perform the evaluation, several times, over the course of a rolling 12 months to determine variations over time and/or possibly adjust the labor standard.  You can set the standard at time “X.” However, a few more data points may compel you to more accurately adjust the labor standard.

Check out Greenbox at www.greenboxsystems.com. According to the company, Greenbox components are 100% organic-based materials, and phase-change material is nontoxic and fully biodegradable. Unlike EPS boxes that ship once and are then tossed into a landfill, Greenbox is designed for reuse. Studies show that Greenbox phase-change materials suffer no thermal degradation after more than 20,000 uses. I can not find any information on R-values on the Web site, so I believe you will have to call Greenbox to inquire about the PCMs and their R-values.

The * Denotes a required field

Contact information will not be shared with any third parties

Canon Communications reserves the right to omit irrelevant or duplicate questions. If your question is chosen, it will appear with the Expert answer on the site. Please check back frequently to see the answer to your question and others submitted by people in your industry.