The six tell-tale signs you need protective foam inserts

There are many ways in which product equipment can trip you up.

Picture the scene:

You are working on an important project, and your team working on-site mustn’t experience any delays. Then you get the call: the specialist equipment they need has arrived, but it is not working.

So, now you have to source a replacement, deal with the admin of returning the broken unit, and all the while, your team of engineers or field staff are sitting twiddling their thumbs with nothing to do.

However, this is not the only way that items – be they products, specialist tools, or equipment, or even parts and components – can become damaged and cause you problems.

What about your customers receiving faulty items? What about the admin rectifying this? The cost of replacements? What is the price of the written-off items that cannot be repaired or resold?

What about the cost to your business of their complaints, reluctance to place their repeat business with you and the damage to your reputation?

This is why adequate transit protection and the use of protective foam inserts can have such a significant impact on your business.

How can you tell if you should use protective foam inserts?

Well, there are usually several tell-tale signs, or specific factors to your business, that can help you decipher if they could help your operations:

• You receive a high volume of returns.
• You ship high-value items and in high volumes.
• You’re experiencing more customer complaints.
• Items keep getting lost in transit.
• You’re seeing more wasted time on-site.
• You’re shipping business or mission-critical items.

Returns are bad news for your business. Damaged items arriving with your customers not only frustrate them, but also add the hassle and admin of organising the return and replacement (hassle and admin you will also incur).

Whilst some levels of returns will always be likely if this becomes common —or even relatively frequent —it can seriously damage your customer relationships.

More seriously, this can lead to customer losses, lost repeat business, and irreparable damage to your company’s reputation and perception. This is in addition to the actual cost of the damaged items if they can’t be repaired or resold, as well as the delivery costs incurred.

This is why damage in transit and the associated customer returns can be a sign that you should consider using foam protection.

Unfortunately, several other factors make ascertaining the correct type and application of foam protection a bit more complicated (which are covered later in this guide).

However, suppose you are sending out rare, very high-value, specialist, or “business-critical” parts or equipment. In that case, the potential cost of not using engineered foam inserts is considerably higher than the cost of implementing them.

As mentioned in the last section, one of the key considerations when weighing up whether to use foam inserts is the value and volume of the items you are sending.

For example, suppose you are increasingly finding that you are sending low volumes of very high-value items. In that case, custom foam inserts (and potentially appropriate cases, too) are almost sure to be a good fit for your business.

However, mid-volume items (such as TVs or automotive parts) sent in high volume may require lower-quality foam packaging that can be mass-produced more cost-effectively, such as Stratocell foam (as opposed to intricate Plastazote foam inserts).

The exception to this is when multiple parts are sent in a single container as part of a manufacturing supply chain, in which case foam dunnage and dividers can make a massive difference in the number of parts or components rejected.

At the bottom end of the scale—low-volume items sent in very high volumes—foam is unlikely to be a suitable option. That said, transit damage can still eat into profits (and reputation) in this scenario. Still, solutions such as corrugated packaging cradles or inserts are likely to be successful whilst remaining cost-effective.

The bottom line is that you need to understand whether the cost of the different types of foam will be offset by the reduction in transit damage they achieve.

Returns on their own may not actually be an issue, and it is nigh on impossible to eliminate transit damage; engineered foam inserts will get as close as possible to eradicating it.

Essentially, your customers should understand that, from time to time, damage may occur. You should, however, be concerned when this happens so frequently that your customers begin to complain.

This indicates, firstly, that they are receiving enough goods from you to notice a trend (e.g., the damage is happening regularly enough to be noticed), and, secondly, that your transit cases or packaging aren’t up to standard.

Of course, the next logical step for customers who regularly complain is to place their business elsewhere.

Transit damage will not only affect your customers directly; however, it will also affect your business. A key issue your business may be facing is wasted on-site time by your field engineers or technicians.

For example, you sent a couple of staff members to fix a customer’s equipment that you initially manufactured or supplied. The fact that this equipment isn’t working isn’t a good start, but it may not be your fault (it may even be routine maintenance).

However, your team arrives on-site, starts working, and then finds that a crucial tool or their own equipment is either not working or not calibrated correctly. Effectively, they can’t do their job.

So their journey is wasted, and their wages still need to be paid even though they couldn’t achieve what they set out to do. Another job will now have to wait whilst this one is rescheduled. Your customer still hasn’t had their equipment fixed, and you now have equipment that needs to be repaired or replaced as well.

All of this incurs a cost, which is why your toolkits and equipment must be protected as well.

High-performance protective cases and foam case inserts will undoubtedly go a long way toward helping avoid this issue. They will also have the added benefit of improving your company’s reputation as reliable, efficient, and worth doing business with.

Another significant cost frequently encountered with staff working on location can be massively reduced by using foam inserts: lost tools or equipment.

It is surprisingly common for items to be accidentally left behind or mislaid on-site. Maybe your staff are strapped for time and rushing to their next job, maybe the tool is relatively small and easy to miss. Perhaps it is difficult to tell at a glance whether all the items have been repacked, so it is assumed they have (even if this isn’t the case).

Sometimes the value of the product being shipped isn’t actually the most relevant consideration.

For example, a critical medical device that is needed urgently but arrives damaged could be the difference between life and death.

You could make a similar argument for any tool or equipment being sent to a war zone or military application, whilst there are situations where specific equipment arriving undamaged could be critical in preventing environmental disasters (think offshore drilling).

In these situations, whilst the items themselves may be replaced easily, a person’s life (or environment) cannot.

If this applies to your market or industry, foam inserts are critical to ensuring that any business or mission-critical items arrive in the condition in which they were sent.

Even at a much lower level, if your equipment arriving damaged halts production lines at a large manufacturer, the cost implications (and potential penalties you may face) could be highly significant.

As a result, it is essential to take a holistic view of the impacts of damaged items in transit before deciding whether you require high-performance protective foam inserts for your shipping cases and operations.

Foam inserts for cases and/or packaging can have a potentially massive impact on your business, and whilst the headline figure will always be the amount of cost you have been able to eliminate through reducing damage, the secondary benefits, such as increased repeat business, satisfied customers, and brand reputation, can be just as significant as well.

If you’d like to discuss which protective foam options will work best for your industry and application, get in touch with our team of packaging experts today.