The curse of oversized cartons

Imagine that you order a small product online – perhaps a memory card or a handmade piece of jewelry. The excited wait starts, but what finally lands outside your front door is a package that is big enough to hold a small dog and filled with a huge quantity of padding material. Frustrating, isn’t it? This is where CASTN comes into play, the software for carton set optimization.

We have all experienced it: A tiny product lost in a huge carton. It feels as if you ordered a box of air and got a little product with it. But why does that happen at all? The answer lies with the lack of coordination between items and cartons. Companies collect a large mix of carton types over time to meet the various requirements of their products. This sounds reasonable, but it also often has the result that cartons and items are not coordinated with each other and tiny products end up in cartons that are much too large. The inefficient use of space and material are the results.

To finally change this, there is CASTN – rescue in the form of software. CASTN stands for Carton Set Optimization and is intelligent software that puts together an optimum carton combination for shipping companies, tailored to their individual order and item structure. The idea behind this is to calculate the perfect compromise between variety and volume utilization that can be achieved with a shipping carton set.

How that works? Well, it’s not really magic but rather a clever combination of data, algorithms and technology. CASTN is based on a wealth of information on products, orders and carton types. The software is therefore based on data and relies on input from customers to create customized solutions. This data includes item and master data, order data and current carton specifications. To take into account seasonal fluctuations and trends, a representative data set collected during approximately one year forms the basis for the calculations. “We have a certain standard for the data that we require because the optimization is always only as good as the master data. Because – to put it bluntly – if you put garbage in, garbage will also come out,” explains Lukas Lehmann, project manager at Fraunhofer IML.

For this reason, data preprocessing is carried out in the second step as standard, in order to filter out defective, erroneous or out-of-line data and create a reliable basis. The third step is the status quo calculation in which the degree of volume utilization is determined for the customer’s existing carton set. This is frequently less than 40 percent – the rest is air.

Now the actual magic starts: the carton set optimization. The CASTN software functions based on two linked algorithms that work in a loop. This two-step process aims to iteratively “fine-tune” the cartons for an optimum volume utilization. The first algorithm, CASTN, uses an evolutionary approach to create different carton sets on the basis of parameters such as the number of permitted cartons or the maximum and minimum dimensions. The second algorithm, a bin-packing algorithm, then ensures that the orders are efficiently packed in the selected cartons, as in the game Tetris. 

“What we end up with are specific carton sets, for example, the optimum 5-piece set with the length, width, height as well as frequency of use for each of the individual five cartons. We also have this for every other carton set, in other words, for a 6-piece or 7-piece set – just as required,” explains Lehmann.

The range of services for CASTN offer a holistic solution that takes into account the customer’s individual upstream and downstream logistics processes and goes beyond mere calculation. It contains a consultation component that ensures that the created carton set is optimally integrated into the company’s logistics processes. Industrial projects with the Nordwest and Babymarkt companies already show promising results: On average, the volume utilization increased by 35 to 45 percent, while the number of carton variants in the set decreased at the same time.

The advantages of CASTN go far beyond mere packaging. The software enables companies to meet future regulations and helps them to reduce complexity and optimize packing processes, which additionally leads to cost savings. “We are currently observing an interesting development in the packaging sector. While the focus used to be primarily on packaging costs, ecological sustainability is now becoming increasingly important. Ecological factors can also have a positive effect on profitability, as seen with the example of CASTN. Therefore, an orientation that used to be mainly counteractive is now becoming complementary. In the long term, sustainability goes hand in hand with economic advantages,” explains Lehmann. This development is further underscored by the draft bill of the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation: It provides for a maximum empty space ratio of 40 percent for secondary and transport packaging. The EU regulation makes it clear that the topic of ecological sustainability is increasingly a prerequisite for mail-order companies and thus an economic factor as well. 

The CASTN team is currently looking for suitable partners and follow-up funding to further develop the software. “Our next goal is to expand the range of functions to include complex geometries and additional item properties. In the long term, there is further great potential here for leaving air out of parcels, saving packaging material and thus ensuring more sustainable parcel logistics,” says Lehmann.

After all, CASTN opens the door to a more sustainable future for e-commerce. Less wasted space means lower transport costs and fewer emissions. Less padding material means less waste. This is a glimpse into a future in which companies not only enjoy economic benefits but also help to protect the environment. A future in which tiny products are no longer lost in huge boxes.