“We had to scale output without stretching the plant footprint,” recalls Miguel Duarte, Production Manager at Atlas Move Co. “Three regions, 150+ SKUs, and a busy summer season—any variability shows up fast on the dock.” The team evaluated sourcing, design, and print, then partnered with uline boxes to standardize carton footprints across facilities.
Here’s the context: corrugated packaging for moving kits is high-volume during peaks and unforgiving on changeovers. We needed a print stack that could handle long-run corrugated with consistent color and short-run regional variants without dragging line speed. Flexographic Printing for base lines, Digital Printing for on-demand, Water-based Ink throughout, and die-cutting/gluing that wouldn’t bottleneck.
Customers keep asking, “where do you get boxes for moving?” Our answer had to be more than a supplier list. It had to be a production story: predictable color, defined footprints, clean changeovers, and pack-outs that don’t stall when demand spikes.
Company Overview and History
Atlas Move Co. has shipped moving kits for two decades, serving North America, the EU, and a growing APAC footprint. The portfolio spans wardrobe cartons, dish packs, tape, and inserts—plus kits with pre-set assortments that include moving boxes large for bulky items. Corrugated Board is the backbone, with fluting choices tuned to load strength and stacking needs.
The production environment started with two wide web flexo lines (1.6 m) and three rotary die-cutters. Seasonal peaks could double weekly carton output, with setup times eating a chunk of available hours. A complex SKU mix—base cartons, branded variants, and regional copy—made consistency hard. For branded kits and specialty SKUs, uline custom boxes were integrated to keep specific design and structural specs aligned across regions.
Growth added pressure: more SKUs, tighter timelines, and higher expectations from retail and e-commerce partners. Bulk storage and inter-warehouse transfers made pallet stability and unit load integrity critical; we leaned on uline gaylord boxes for high-cube skus in DC moves. Baseline OEE hovered around 65–68% before the project—fine on paper, but fragile under peak demand.
Cost and Efficiency Challenges
Scrap rates were stuck around 8–10%, driven by color drift, registration misses on thicker board grades, and edge-crush variability. Changeovers could consume 45–60 minutes, especially when moving between flute combinations and plate sets. Color variance (ΔE) often pushed beyond 3, which is hard to ignore when pallets of mixed lots land in the same distribution center.
Material variability didn’t help: humidity swings altered board behavior, and water-based inks changed characteristics with temperature. Price pressure on kits—think promotions that promise moving boxes under $20—meant we couldn’t simply over-spec materials to mask process issues. We had to stabilize the process instead of throwing cost at the problem.
Solution Design and Configuration
We split work by run length. Long-run cartons moved to Flexographic Printing with Water-based Ink, tuned to corrugated absorption and press parameters. Short-run, region-specific cartons went Digital Printing for faster art swaps and minimal plate dependency. We implemented G7 calibration and brought color targets closer to ISO 12647 expectations, pragmatic about corrugated’s ink holdout. Finishing stayed practical: rotary die-cutting, varnishing where scuff resistance mattered, and robust gluing.
Standardization was the turning point. A footprint library reduced carton sizes to a core set. Plate libraries were mapped to these footprints and to repeatable substrate grades. The brand partnered with uline boxes to align carton specs across regions, while uline custom boxes handled specialty brand kits that needed per-SKU print and structural tweaks. For DC bulk moves, uline gaylord boxes became the default high-cube container to reduce repack events and mixed-load headaches.
We staged the change over 12 weeks: pilot runs, inline inspection for defect mapping, operator training on color checks and humidity management, and a changeover cart with kitted plates/anilox. ΔE tightened toward 1.5–2 on typical board grades. There was a catch: humidity spikes could still sway fiber behavior. On those days we slowed the line by 5–8% and adjusted dryer settings—an acceptable trade-off compared to chasing faults downstream.
Quantitative Results and Metrics
Scrap moved from 8–10% to roughly 5–6% across the main lines. FPY% climbed from the high 80s to 92–94%, with fewer rework tickets tied to color or registration. Average changeover time settled in the 28–35 minute range, helped by the footprint library and kitted setups. Throughput on steady-state weeks went up by 12–15%, largely because changeover losses eased.
Defect density fell, with ppm defects landing around 900–1100 versus earlier ranges of 1800–2200. Color held within ΔE 1.5–2 on standard board catalogues; specialty or recycled-heavy grades sat slightly higher, which we documented in lot specs. Energy per pack shifted from roughly 0.22–0.26 kWh/pack to 0.18–0.21, a modest but welcome movement. Based on blended capital and training costs, payback looked feasible at 14–18 months, acknowledging seasonality and substrate mix.
On the customer side, damage claims dropped by 20–25% thanks to sturdier footprints and cleaner QC. Average pack-out time per order dipped by 8–12%, driven by fewer rework events and consistent carton dimensions. Internally, the shorthand became “stick to the spec”—and, for our team, uline boxes meant a common language for carton standards we could trust.
