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EP 578: Smart Packaging Strategies with Shelly Nirvelli of DHL

2025/4/7
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The New Warehouse Podcast

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#retail and e-commerce#e-commerce platform strategies#brand strategy#sustainability and green technologies#product design#workplace strategy People
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Shelly Nirvelli
Topics
我来自DHL供应链,我们专注于为客户提供全面的供应链解决方案,包括仓储、运输和包装。我的团队负责合同包装业务,帮助客户优化包装流程,从产品制造到最终使用,提升效率和竞争力。我们帮助客户重新配置产品包装,例如制作超市货架上的陈列品、万圣节混合糖果包以及宠物项圈的保护壳等。我们提供的服务涵盖多个行业,包括消费品、生命科学与医疗保健、汽车、工程制造等。 我们的客户利用我们的合同包装服务来提升自身竞争力,例如推出新产品、推迟生产以更贴近需求信号,从而减少预测误差。我们还提供材料管理服务,规划、采购包装材料,并通过Packit系统进行管理。Packit系统整合了各种技术,帮助我们从端到端供应链的角度优化包装,减少包装用量,降低成本,并提升可持续性。 我们通过在配送中心进行包装转换,可以利用客户现有的库存,避免将产品送往异地包装再送回,从而节省时间、降低碳排放和运输成本。电子商务的兴起促使包装设计更加注重消费者体验,包括合适的包装尺寸、产品保护和品牌保护等。我们利用工具和技术优化纸箱尺寸,最大限度地减少空间浪费,同时保护产品。 我们通过材料采购策略,从端到端供应链角度,帮助客户减少包装用量。我们与60家供应商在900个地点合作,根据客户需求,选择最佳的材料和设计,优化包装,提高效率和效益。即使在成熟的企业中,一些看似简单的细节也可能被忽视,例如重复采购相同的材料。通过Packit系统,我们可以识别这些问题,并通过优化采购策略,为客户节省成本,降低库存积压。 我们还通过简单的包装设计调整,例如去除不必要的塑料,降低成本,提高可回收性。我们根据客户需求,提供多种解决方案,例如减少塑料用量或保持产品安全。我们为不同行业提供定制化服务,例如汽车行业和消费品行业。我们关注可持续发展,并致力于减少碳排放。我们通过高效的包装规划、设计和供应链管理,减少碳排放。我们也鼓励客户选择本地供应商,减少运输距离和碳排放。 我们不断探索新的技术和解决方案,以满足客户需求,并提升包装效率和可持续性。未来包装将更加灵活、可持续,并会更多地应用于电子商务领域,同时新技术将降低包装生产成本。我们拥有50多名包装专家,随时准备为客户提供服务。

Deep Dive

DHL供应链:用智能包装赋能客户竞争力

作为DHL供应链的成员,我致力于为客户提供全面的供应链解决方案,涵盖仓储、运输和包装等各个环节。我的团队专注于合同包装业务,我们不仅仅是简单的包装服务提供商,更是帮助客户优化包装流程,从产品设计到最终交付,提升效率,增强竞争力的战略合作伙伴。

我们的工作涵盖了各种包装形式,从超市货架上的精美陈列品,到万圣节的混合糖果包,再到宠物项圈的定制保护壳,我们都能提供专业的解决方案。服务范围遍及消费品、生命科学与医疗保健、汽车、工程制造等多个行业,为不同客户提供量身定制的服务。

客户如何利用智能包装获得竞争优势? 这正是我们工作的核心。客户利用我们的合同包装服务,实现以下目标:

  • 差异化竞争: 独特的包装设计,让产品在货架上脱颖而出。
  • 新品上市: 快速、高效地完成新产品的包装,抢占市场先机。
  • 需求预测优化: 通过推迟生产,更精准地把握市场需求,减少库存积压和浪费。

Packit系统:赋能端到端供应链优化

我们拥有强大的Packit系统,它整合了材料管理和合同包装流程。Packit系统不仅能规划和采购包装材料,更能从端到端供应链的角度,优化包装设计,减少材料用量,降低成本,并提升可持续性。通过在配送中心进行包装转换,我们充分利用客户现有的库存,避免了不必要的运输和碳排放,节省了时间和成本。

电子商务的快速发展也深刻地影响着包装设计。我们利用先进的工具和技术优化纸箱尺寸,最大限度地减少空间浪费,同时确保产品安全,提升消费者拆箱体验。

可持续发展:贯穿始终的承诺

可持续发展是DHL的企业使命,也是我们包装业务的核心价值观。我们通过以下方式帮助客户实现可持续包装:

  • 高效的材料采购策略: 与60家供应商在900个地点合作,选择最合适的材料和设计,最大限度地减少浪费。
  • 精益求精的包装设计: 通过精细化设计,减少包装材料用量,提高可回收性,例如去除不必要的塑料。
  • 本地化采购: 优先选择本地供应商,减少运输距离和碳排放。

数据驱动,精益管理

即使在经验丰富的企业中,一些看似简单的细节也可能被忽视,例如重复采购相同的材料。Packit系统帮助我们识别这些问题,并通过优化采购策略,为客户节省成本,降低库存积压。我们通过数据分析,为客户提供更精准的建议,帮助他们实现精益管理。

未来展望:更灵活、更可持续、更智能

未来的包装将更加灵活,更注重可持续发展,并与电子商务深度融合。新技术的应用将进一步降低包装生产成本,提升效率。我们团队的50多名包装专家,将持续探索新的技术和解决方案,为客户提供更优质的服务。 我们相信,智能包装将成为企业提升竞争力的关键因素。

Chapters
This chapter introduces DHL Supply Chain, its services, and its approach to contract packaging. It highlights DHL's work across various industries, from consumer goods to healthcare.
  • DHL Supply Chain is a division of DHL Group focusing on warehousing, transportation, and packaging.
  • They offer contract packaging services, helping clients reconfigure products from manufacturing to use.
  • Their services include filling displays, bagging, clamshelling, and labeling, across various industries.

Shownotes Transcript

Translations:
中文

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The New Warehouse podcast hosted by Kevin Lawton is your source for insights and ideas from the distribution, transportation, and logistics industry. A new episode every Monday morning brings you the latest from industry experts and thought leaders. And now, here's Kevin.

hey guys it's kevin with the new warehouse podcast i am here at manifest 2025 which is presented by dhl and we are at the dhl supply chain booth and i'm going to be joined by shelly nervelli she's the vp of business development for packaging and of course

We're going to talk all about packaging today. We're going to talk about some of the variations of packaging, how DHL looks at packaging, what DHL is up to in regards to packaging, and how it can be a competitive advantage for your operation and your organization. So, Shelly, thanks for having me in your booth. How are you? I appreciate you. I'm good, thanks. Yeah, it's good to connect with you. We're both adjunct professors, so we're getting on the same wavelength here a little bit from an academic perspective.

So we're here at the DHL booth, right? So tell us a little bit about, for people that maybe are not familiar, I don't know where you've been if you're not familiar, but what is DHL Supply Chain all about? So DHL Supply Chain is a division of the DHL Group who focuses on core solutions including warehousing, transportation, LLP,

packaging among others. So we have a whole other suite of services that we offer but those are the few that I'm going to focus on right now. Within the packaging solutions what my group does is the contract packaging side of things which is it's basically helping our customers reconfigure things from the time it's made to the time that it's used at its simplest form. So think about things like filled displays that you would see in the grocery stores or things like little mini candies that go into

bags at Halloween so that you have that mixed pack so that you don't have to have all just one flavor. We will do the bagging for those kinds of things. We'll do clam shells for clients. For example, in animal health, we clam shell flea and tick collars.

to make sure that they're nice and safe and secure and that they get to market the way they need to. We do labeling, we do hitting all across industries. So these are services that we offer across our consumer customers, life sciences and healthcare, auto mobility, engineering manufacturing,

I'm sure I'm forgetting some, but they're around here somewhere. All these are our clients and many of these are also some of our secondary packaging clients as well. Yeah, and I think there's so much, as we were saying here a little earlier, there's so much involved.

with packaging, right? So there's so many different ways that we could go the packaging side, but tell us a little bit about, you know, if we look at packaging right now, like what's kind of going on in the packaging world, what for your clients, right? What are they looking at from a packaging perspective and you know, maybe how are they, how are they leveraging that to give them some kind of advantage in the market? - Okay, it's a great question.

I should also tell you that beyond the contract packaging piece of things of our scope, we also have the materials management side of things, which is how we plan, source, and procure all the stuff that goes into the contract packaging piece of it. Right. And then we enable all of that with our systems technology, which is called Packet. And I mention all of that because it's relevant to where we're going here. So, what our clients are typically doing with what it is that we're contract packaging is they're using it to differentiate themselves

against their competitors. They're using it to offer exposure to new products. They're using it to postpone their production until they're closer to understanding the demand signal so that they don't have to have forecasting quite so accurately done. They're using it to, again, gain their own competitive advantage. And so that's really the world that we live in is how do we help our brands get to market, whether it's...

through whatever channel they need to in whatever format they want so that it's giving their consumers and their customers the experience that they need. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's really smart in it. I love the fact you said that they're leveraging it to be able to utilize to get closer to the true demand, right? So tell us a little bit about...

how that works, right? How do they go about leveraging the packaging to allow them to get a little more time before they actually have that demand? So one of the easy examples that I can offer in our world is, for example, a lot of our customers, you can see you know these names, they're big enough in scale. We're doing warehousing for them, for example, so we're sitting on these piles of inventory. So we're saying, okay, well, we're going to perform those conversions that come from packaging right here in the distribution center.

And by doing that, we avoid having to spend the time sending it off-site and the

the carbon emissions and the transportation costs and all those things, sending it off-site and then back on-site. So it's leveraging the inventory that our customers already have in order to accommodate that postponement that we talked about. Interesting, interesting. Yeah, and I think that makes a lot of sense. I will say, actually, I work for a company. We're at a DHL site, so I know a little bit about that. It's very interesting to see how that packaging can be leveraged from a display perspective as well and how...

these different variations of, you know, coming from basically, you know, bulk inventory and how do you break that down into different variety packs or,

those packages that you see in the middle of the aisle at the grocery store and all those different things. So tell us a little bit about maybe too some of the evolution of the packaging as we've seen a rise in e-commerce as well. How does that come into play for some of your customers? - We're just seeing a more thoughtful mix of what are the right things to ship in their own containers,

What are the right ways to deliver that brand experience when our customers are opening those units at home? What are the right ways to protect against things like security, product protection, brand protection, things like that? So it's in the world of e-commerce, it's about right sizing the cartons that we're putting things into. So we have tools and technology that helps us optimize the carton size so that we're minimizing air.

and also protecting the precious cargo inside. Yeah, absolutely. I think it's really interesting too to see that evolution in the space, right? Because the consumer dictates a lot of that stuff and how we've had to change our operations and change the processes, change packaging to be able to accommodate that consumer. But I think it's really interesting, the packaging perspective, it's such a vital part of the supply chain, right?

So from the perspective, if we think about the end-to-end supply chain, there's packaging needed to protect these items, as you mentioned earlier, to go from all these different nodes and points within the supply chain. So how are you seeing, because I think something that's kind of come up a lot is excess packaging too, right? From a sustainability perspective. Yeah.

How are you seeing some of your customers, how are you helping some of your customers to be able from an end-to-end supply chain perspective maybe reduce the amount of packaging they're using? That's a fun one. So, one of the ways that we do that is through our material sourcing strategy.

What we'll do is we'll get or create a brief from our client and that will explain to us what is it that they're trying to accomplish. And then we'll load that into our packet system and our materials management portion of packet is powered by spec, right? Okay. And to elaborate a little bit on it, the contract packaging side of it is powered by new logistics or industry leading technologies. We then layer on some custom built microservices and then fully integrate them to maintain visibility and things like that.

So the reason it's important that it's all connected is because one of the big answers is we look at it from end to end. And so we're taking this total supply chain perspective about what is it going to take to get this product to look how it needs to look and arrive where it needs to arrive safely and securely, but with the least amount of packaging that's necessary. So that's doing things like we have about...

60 suppliers in about 900 locations that we work with for our materials management. So when we get that creative beef from our clients, we're going to the right supplier partners of ours and we're saying, hey, here's what we want to accomplish. Give us your best ideas. And so they come to us, they give us their designs, we work together with them and we optimize and we choose the best fit for that particular client. And that is based on things like the best innovations that they have available. So if someone's...

offering digital print for something and if it's a good fit we will leverage that as one way to do things like expedite the whole process of getting that created be able to have lower run quantities all the benefits that come with that and then we will also connect with our contract packaging team to say let's dissect this together and let's figure out how we can make this work in a way that is going to be most efficient most effective for our clients because

we win when our clients get a solution that is the most efficient and effective for them. That's what's going to keep our clients coming back to us. That's what creates delayed customers. And that's ultimately what we're after. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, it ends up ultimately creating efficiency within your operations too, right? As you're shipping for them. So tell us a little bit about, I mean, maybe...

Maybe the opportunity there too for your customers or people that are just shipping things in general, having that excess packaging or maybe the wrong packaging or just making the slightest tweak to your packaging, right? I mean, how much of an impact can that have on their overall supply chain and the business? So that's a good question.

I would say that even in really sophisticated organizations, some of the basic things are just kind of falling between the cracks. So one example I'll give you is a major confectionery client of ours asked us to take a look at their materials management processes. And our team took a look and we realized that they were

buying the same thing from three different partners a total of 21 times a year. And we took a look through Packit, it helped us identify there's an opportunity there for aggregation and standardization. And so it was able to help us

figure out the right cadence of purchasing to do those buys quarterly. And that sounds pretty simple and it sounds pretty easy, but they weren't going to find it any other way. We needed that system technology. We needed that sort of neutral view that we could bring to say, hey, here's how we're going to do it. And what that was able to deliver was it was above a 20% savings for them. And

while we were helping reduce their obsolescence to below 1%, that was like a 5x reduction for them. So just by these seemingly non-rocket science things, they're simple conceptually, but without the technology or the tenacity and the expertise to do it, they're just not getting done. Yeah, very interesting. I think it's

It's so interesting when you look at our industry, right? And these little small things, like you said, these things that are just kind of easy enough to just fall between the cracks, right? You actually take a look at them and kind of dissect them a little bit. Just huge savings, right? Yeah, another example I'll give you, a client came to us and they said, hey, here's this carton that we'd like you to source. And we looked at it and we were like, okay, we will source that for you. Yeah.

And here's another option where we just worked with our supplier partners and all we did, it had a tear strip around the top and we removed the plastic that was underneath it because our supplier partner had a design that would eliminate that and still make a nice, smooth, clean rip. And what that did was it eliminated all that plastic and it made it curbside recyclable. It made it more affordable. And so it's all about giving our clients choice. Some of our clients come to us and say things like, hey,

Removing plastic from the client experience is really important to us from a brand standpoint. So we'll help with that. Other clients say, "Hey, we know that plastic's important. It keeps our product safe, it keeps it fresh, it keeps it protected, but here's some other goals that we have." So we'll help work with whatever it is that our clients need to achieve. I mean, you see that with all these products. We have very, very different customers. When we're working with our auto mobility customers, for example, we're handling everything from huge diesel engines to little tiny washers.

and putting those little washers in bags so that when the repair technician is repairing an engine on an ambulance or a city bus or something like that, that they have everything they need right at their fingertips. So that's very different than building a display that goes to the grocery store to catch your eye. So it's all about meeting the customers with

the solutions that they need for their industry. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, you don't think about it in your daily life, right? But like you said, I mean, there's so much variation in the packaging you see. And, you know, if somebody's watching us, listening, like they're in their car,

in their car or they're sitting at home or something like you just look around you like there's a ton of things right in front of you probably that are in some type of packaging and all different right so there's a lot of options there a lot of variability so it's great to hear how you know you're able to help them kind of navigate and figure out the best options through these different choices that you guys have been able to put together in your I guess portfolio of suppliers and things like that

So I'm curious here at Manifest, since we're on site here, what have people been asking about or

you know saying that they have challenges with and what it pertains to packaging? We're hearing a lot more and more about materials management so on the contract packaging side of things our customers we've got about we've got over 50 locations that do contract packaging in North America over 240 globally the materials management side of things was kind of something that our clients pulled us into because they were saying look

Thank you for doing the actual execution of this, and here's where we need more help. So what we're seeing is this pull toward the total turnkey solutions, and there are great partners out there who do that work, but what we're able to do is help them total end-to-end with this material's agnostic solution neutral perspective that we can offer, and that's kind of what we're seeing. We keep hearing from our customers that the process

IT platform that we're bringing forward with Packet is like nothing else that they have and they're desperate for the digitalization and the insight that we can give them. So our customers, they're pretty classic themes. They want speed and agility. They want to be able to get to market quickly. They want information, data accessibility. They want to help be able to take advantage of the automation solutions that are out there. So that's what our team does is lives and breathes and looks around it here at other conferences. We'll be at the

The Smithers, e-commerce, sustainability and packaging session in a month from now, we hit PacExpo. We're always out in the industry trying to figure out the best tools that are out there, whether it's from materials management or contract packaging, to make sure that we put those in our innovation funnel. And I know you talked to Brian Gahn already about our accelerated digitalization funnel. We have the same kind of funnel, exactly the same model for contract packaging, where we've got technologies...

and processes in all three phases of the funnel. And our team is behind the scenes taking a look at which of these operations are a good fit for this types of emerging technology, which kind of clients are a good fit for us to pilot things, which kind of...

locations are good for and ready for the productization of the technologies that we put forward. Yeah, very interesting. And obviously, it's definitely very inspiring how you guys do look at all of the latest innovations all across the place. And you're always trying to see what's going to work, what's going to work for our clients, or what can we have in our back pocket in case there's a client that comes up that it can work for. It's really great to see that. And

Now you mentioned in there about the sustainability aspect, right? So obviously around packaging, that's become a huge discussion too, right? So talk to us a little bit about, you know, some of the, I guess maybe first talk to us a little bit about some of the sustainability challenges around packaging. And then we'll talk about maybe some of the opportunities and things that you've done for some of your clients.

So I think you probably know from talking to Brian about DHL's commitment to sustainability. So mission 2050 is to be net emissions neutral by 2050. And we have some very serious science-based target goals that we're on track to achieve by 2030. So in the context of that, everything we do in the realm of packaging is intended to reduce those things. So I would say our attack on sustainability is by attacking every piece of the supply chain. So it starts with efficient and effective packaging.

planning, so using our machine learning, AI, using all the things that the materials management module at Packit offers us, using all those things to figure out how do we buy the right amounts so that we're maintaining low levels of obsolescence while still making sure that we always have what we need to build when we need to build it. From a design standpoint, it's always making sure that we're using the

most efficient overall design so that it, again, it gets to where it needs to be while it's protected without being overbuilt. So whether that's the right amount of porrugate, the right thickness, the right substrates, all those things. And then just making sure that we're taking that full supply chain perspective like we talked about, making the right size

cartons, making it ship well. So it's all of the aspects. Yeah, absolutely. And do you see your customers coming to you saying that, you know, I guess their customers are kind of telling them or getting from the market that they need a more sustainable option. I mean, do you see that kind of

driving you guys and challenging you a little bit to figure out how to be more sustainable in the practices? I would say it's more just...

feeling what we're already doing. Our customers aren't having to pull us into sustainability because it's something that we believe so solidly as DHL. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Interesting. And so I think, you know, it's very great to see how you guys are approaching that, right? You have that goal and you're thinking about, you know, how do we make this better, you know, be more sustainable, right?

internally for DHL too, but then in turn, because you serve so many people, right? - Yes. - You know, that sustainability gets spread out through multiple different channels as well, right? - Yeah. - Which is a great thing, yeah. - Yeah, other things, again, they don't have to be rocket science to be impactful, is just how we design our networks by, for example, if we've got materials management offering that we're looking at and we've got vendor partners, all else being equal, if we have two wonderful solutions

the one that's going to win in that situation is often the one that's going to be geographically closest. And we have examples of that where we'll see customers sourcing product from Chicagoland when it's going to be built and used in Pennsylvania. And so, again, it doesn't seem complicated, but we see this time and time again where we'll source locally and that reduces not only cost, but emissions. We see examples even within brands of

sourcing things from overseas. So they're shipping substrates and materials all the way from Asia to be used when we could offer locally or domestically sourced items which have the same look and feel and quality from that perspective. But often some of the challenges that we see in our customers is that

The decisions about bringing the products to market can happen within the brands and they become so siloed that it's sort of challenging to see the forest for the trees. And those decisions happen and it's very, very important to make sure that we honor what those brands want and need. But we're also trying to offer, like I said earlier, we're offering ideas. Yes, we can absolutely do that. We can copy exactly what you have today and here's how we'll help make it better. Or here's another option or two or three that...

give you different benefits and it's up to you to choose what's right for you. Interesting. Yeah. I think it's great that you, you know, we've talked about this before but I want to say that it's great that you have all these options, right? So when a customer comes and

they're engaging with you for the first time, you're like, "Oh, I have this problem, and I have this problem." And you're like, "Well, we have this solution, and we have this solution." You'll be able to bring that to the table and really help them take their business to the next level, and that experience for their customers at the end of the day to be the best.

So tell us a little bit about, because you mentioned in there, we talked about packaging and some of the advantages. You talked a little bit about automation. So I'm curious how the packaging kind of ties into some of the automation things that you're doing.

How important does the packaging become with some of these projects? Yeah, so our automation, it runs the whole gambit. So we have some operations which are super manual and they're very highly flexible where all the equipment's on rollers and we just roll it in and roll it out, but it's very fundamental.

In general, 70% of our operations have some kind of automation in them, so it's pervasive. But some of them have more people in them than others. Some of our operations are so high volume and predictable and consistent that they look like production plants and facilities like that. So part of the fun of it is figuring out what's the right level for this client.

and what are the right technologies for them. But we'll also make recommendations. For example, once we're looking at a client's portfolio, we'll say, if we were able to tweak X, Y, and Z, here's the types of automation that we would be able to introduce, and it would mean ABC for your business. And that's choice. That they have a word.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's really interesting to hear that because there is like so many, like we talked about before, so many little tweaks that, you know, to your point, like could lead to other potential solutions, right. And doing different things, which I think is really interesting to hear. So now before we let you go here, we are at manifest, right. Which is the future of logistics and supply chain, but we need to hear from you. What's the future of packaging? Oh, that's such a good question. Yeah.

I would say the future of packaging is just going to keep, I think it's going to continue getting even more flexible. I think we're going to keep seeing evolutions and improvements in sustainability. I think we're going to keep seeing new solutions that are going to help make things more recyclable. I think we're going to keep seeing continued focus on e-commerce. And I think we're going to keep seeing new technologies get more and more cost efficient to introduce into the build side of things.

All right, great. We look forward to that definitely. And it's been a pleasure to talk to you here at Manifest and learn about the packaging side of DHL supply chain. And if people want to learn more, maybe ask you some questions about packaging, what's the best way to do that? We would love that. I got a team of about 50 packaging experts here in North America at your service. If you're interested in talking to us, you can connect with me on LinkedIn, shelley.nervelli at dhl.com would be a great way to start.

Okay, awesome. And we'll definitely put that information in the show notes and at thenewwarehouse.com so people can easily find it. So thank you once again, Shelly, for having me in your booth here at Manifest. You've been listening to The New Warehouse Podcast with Kevin Lawton. Subscribe and check us out online at thenewwarehouse.com.

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