From five to fifty packages a week: what bottlenecks first
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by Verpakkingdeals.nl
6 min reading time
Five packages a week means you can improvise; fifty packages a week means improvisation costs you an hour every night. These are the five areas where things first go wrong, and what you can do about it.
With five packages a week, you pack on the kitchen table, cut tape with scissors, and grab new boxes when you need them. That works fine. With fifty packages a week, that exact same process no longer works: you lose an evening a week to actions you hardly notice, and you constantly run out of boxes or rolls. As a result, growth feels harder than it is.
The good news: the bottlenecks are predictable. Below are five areas where things typically get stuck first, in the order you usually encounter them.
1. Your stock runs out sooner than expected
From five to fifty packages isn't ten times as much packing work, but it is ten times as much consumption. Those who order by feel will run out of boxes at the wrong moment. The solution is boring and effective: calculate once per item how much you use per package, and multiply that by your expected weekly quantity.
An example for fifty packages per week, with an average of 1 meter of tape and 1.5 meters of bubble wrap per package:
2. Individual tape rolls suddenly become a cost item
For five packages, you buy tape per roll, and that's fine. For fifty packages, you use multiple rolls per month, and the price per meter starts to matter. Calculate it once, because the cheapest roll is not always the cheapest per meter:
At fifty meters per week, the difference between six and four and a half cents per meter is not a world-shattering amount, but it is money you save without any effort. More importantly, there's a second gain: with a box of 36 rolls, you'll never stop again because you ran out of tape.
When converting, pay attention to the length, not the price per roll. 50 and 66-meter rolls look identical in the cupboard.
3. You no longer pack one by one
The biggest time saving comes not from working faster, but from switching tasks less often. For fifty packages, it pays to work per action instead of per package: first set up all the boxes, then tape all the bottoms, then put all the products in, then all the labels. Your hand then always picks up the same tool, and that saves more than you think.
As soon as someone comes to help you for an hour, it turns out you have one dispenser, one knife, and one pair of scissors. Then the two of you are waiting for each other. Duplicating what you grab most often is an investment of a few tens of euros that pays for itself on the first busy Saturday.
With five packages a week, you remember what was in them. With fifty, you don't anymore. Then the first customer calls to say something is missing, and you have no starting point.
Two simple measures get the most out of it. The first is a fixed check as the last action: close the box, put the order next to it one more time, then tape it. The second is visible sealing, so that if there's a complaint, you know if the package was opened en route. Security Seal Stickers VOID, 60 pieces cost €9.95, about sixteen cents per shipment.
Calculate your consumption per package and list weekly quantities next to it.
Switch from individual rolls to bundles for the three items you use up fastest.
Arrange your packing actions in blocks rather than per package.
Buy doubles of what you grab most often.
Add one check and one seal to your regular routine.
You don't have to do this all at once. The first two points will cost you half an hour of calculations and one order, and those two will already remove most of the stress before autumn really gets busy.
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