Running a repeat packaging programme: specifications, call-offs and lead times

Most packaging relationships that go wrong were fine for two years first. The specification was right, the price was right, deliveries arrived, and then something moved: a board grade, a crease, a shade of blue, a lead time. Nobody changed anything deliberately. It drifted.

A repeat programme is the structure that stops drift. It is worth running properly from the distributor’s side, because about half of what makes one work sits with the buyer rather than the manufacturer.

Lock more than you think you need

The specification is the whole programme. Everything else is scheduling.

A specification that holds covers:

• Style and internal dimensions, in millimetres, internal, with the style code or a drawing reference.
• Board grade in full: wall, flute and the paper weights on each face, not just “double wall”.
• Crease positions and glue pattern, which is what actually decides whether a case erects square on a bench or through an automated erector.
• Closure, including strip position and whether there is a second strip for returns.
• Print: colours, the Pantone references and, critically, the approved drawdown on the actual board rather than the Pantone number alone. Our piece on Pantone on kraft explains why that distinction matters on a repeat run.
• Pallet configuration: cases per layer, layers per pallet, overall height, wrap and label.

That last item gets left out most often and causes the most friction, because it is the one your warehouse experiences every delivery.

Anything not written down is a decision somebody will make again next time, correctly or otherwise.

Forecast honestly, call off early

A programme buys you price and lead-time stability. What pays for that on the manufacturing side is planning: board sourced ahead, runs slotted into the schedule, and a run length long enough to be economic.

That needs a forecast that is roughly true. An optimistic annual figure produces a price based on volumes that do not arrive, and the correction is unpleasant for both sides. An honest one, revised when the market moves, holds.

Call-offs then draw against it. The practical rule is that a call-off placed with notice is planned, and a call-off placed without notice is squeezed in, which is where expedited freight and short runs come from. If a customer’s demand genuinely is lumpy, the answer is to build buffer stock into the programme deliberately rather than to make every order urgent.

Decide where the stock sits

Three options, and the cost sits somewhere in all three:

• You hold it. Best availability, your capital, your racking.
• We hold it. Manufactured against the programme and called off, which costs less of your space but has to be agreed as part of the price.
• Nobody holds it. Lowest carrying cost, longest lead time, and it only works if the end customer’s demand is predictable.

The wrong answer is the unexamined one, where everybody assumes somebody else is holding stock and discovers in week one of a promotion that nobody is. Our piece on stocking a wholesale range covers the same question from the range side.

The drift list

Two years in, these are the things that have moved without anyone deciding to move them.

Board grade creep. Specifications gain board over time. A complaint prompts a step up, and nothing ever steps back down. Review the grade against the actual load every year or two; a lot of programmes are carrying a wall more than they need, which costs money on every pallet and, since fees are charged by weight, shows up in EPR tonnage too.

Artwork versions. A logo changes, a barcode is reissued, a recycling mark is updated. Unless there is one controlled artwork file with a version on it, two versions eventually run side by side.

Colour drift. Matched against the last delivery rather than against the approved standard, colour walks. The approved drawdown is the reference, not the previous run.

Product change. The thing in the box gets 3 mm bigger and nobody tells packaging. This is the most common cause of a sudden fit problem in an otherwise stable programme.

Pallet change. The end customer changes racking or a vehicle, and a configuration that worked for years starts arriving awkwardly.

A short annual review covering those five items takes an hour and prevents most of what would otherwise become a complaint.

New formats inside an existing programme

When a programme adds a format, it goes through the same stages as any new design: CAD structure, a sample cut on the digital flatbed, loaded with real product and approved, then tooling and a first run. Our piece on die-cut or standard tooling covers when the tooling is worth committing to.

The temptation on an established programme is to skip the sample because the relationship is good. It is precisely on a long programme that the sample is cheap, because the first run is big.

What to ask for, and what we do

From a manufacturer running your programme you should expect a written specification you can hold them to, a price valid for an agreed period at an agreed volume, a stated lead time for scheduled call-offs, notice of anything that threatens it, and the same box every time.

We run trade supply programmes on that basis: specification agreed and locked, call-offs scheduled against it, production planning and board sourcing structured to keep lead times steady, and any change agreed with you before it happens. We are trade only, so the programme sits behind your range and your customer relationship, and deliveries go to your warehouse or direct to your customer’s site, palletised and labelled as you specify.

Send us the specification and the annual volume and we will come back with a programme price, a lead time and a view on anything in the spec worth revisiting before it is locked.