Tailor-made and on demand

SECONDARY PACKAGING FreeboxTM technology, developed by System in order to produce variable format boxes on demand, arrives at the logistics center of Thun Logistics and Door2Green in Mantua, for a sustainable logistics that respecs the environment.

Door 2 Green, born as a joint-venture between Thun and Samer & Co. Shipping and based in Mantua, has opted for System SpA’s FreeboxTM technology to produce secondary packaging on demand. Launched at Ipack-Ima 2012 by the System SpA’s Packaging division, FreeboxTM starts with neutral flat carton and creates custom boxes in real time for any type of product and with no waste of raw materials, and everything within just 28 square meters.
«Freebox is extremely practical and functional - explains Alessio Longhini, CEO of Door 2 Green - and it enables us to obtain valuable results in terms of saving resources and reducing waste. This means we can create boxes scaled to each product as the need for them arises, so that we don’t have to send air, which is to say packing the goods in semi-empty boxes, wasting both space and energy».
At the Door 2 Green Logistics facility, FreeboxTM is positioned next to the automatic sorting plant (a sorter with a capacity of more than 19,000 pieces per hour), and creates formats as the need for them arises, on demand and in real time, starting with a neutral flat cardboard sheet. It currently produces, in one minute, up to 7 boxes of three possible dimensions between 20x25x15 cm and 40x50x30 cm, but System’s R&D division is readying an ad hoc configuration capable of supplying boxes tailored to the various products to be packaged and shipped, consequently defining the geometries that optimize space even in the final distribution phase. Once made, with the client logo printed in polychromy directly on the Freebox, the carton is conveyed by buffer to the (manual) filling area and then proceeds to shipping.

Target: no more waste. The objective  that Door 2 Green sets itself for the coming months is as simple as it is ambitious:  reorganize the box warehouse on a lean basis. Indeed, the System machine enables not only the minimizing of stockpiles (since the packaging is produced only according to need), but also the managing of cardboard supplies differently by adopting a single universal code to measure the sheet used, which greatly simplifies the tasks of the purchasing department.
Thanks to the development of special applications and spreadsheets, moreover, System SpA is able to help the user to evaluate ROI and prospective savings in terms of raw materials, manual labor, logistics and handling, before purchasing the machine.                                      
                      
Inventions. FreeboxTM is one of the latest systems developed by System SpA. In the 43 years of its history the company based in Fiorano Modenese, which invests on average 5-6% of its profits in R&D, has filed 190 patents.

“Green logistics”, including subcontracting Door 2 Green, a 4PL company born from a joint venture of Thun Logistics (the company that manages Thun SpA’s supply chain) and Samer & Co. Shipping, supports door-to-door global forwarding services, managing logistical flows and striving for the utmost satisfaction of its customers, combined with the utmost respect for the environment. The concern’s main facility in Mantua represents a center of excellence in the field of logistics due to its size, processing technologies and organization. The logistics center has a surface area of 150,000 m2 (36,000 m2 of which covered), with a storage capacity of 26,000 pallets. SKUs are generated paperless and en masse, and the process is supported by more than 3,000 Pick-To-Voice stations and 720 Pick-To-Light stations, all managed in radiofrequency. Products are sorted by an automatic sorter with a capacity of over 19,000 pieces per hour.