Packaging strategy
Packaging is a priority for more efficient inbound parts transport at Nissan
From increasing standard parts per rack to integrating packaging input in early product design, Nissan is rethinking how smarter packaging can reduce trailer use, optimise cost and improve environmental performance across its North American supply chain.
Packaging efficiency goes hand in hand with a more efficient and sustainable use of transport for inbound parts movements. In a keynote presentation at this year’s Automotive Logistics and Supply Chain Global conference, Iván Dávila, director of inbound logistics and supply chain management at Nissan Group of the Americas, provided some examples of where the carmaker was maximising the standard number of parts (SNP) per rack and improving trailer fill rates to bring down the number of trucks used to move parts in North America.
Dávila’s first example showed how Nissan has increased SNP on the movement of one part and achieved a +50% increase in transport optimisation. Nissan’s previous packaging for the part was based on a rack that held three layers of ten parts protected by dunnage. That meant the number of parts able to be loaded into a truck trailer amounted to 2,160 and according to the annual volume moved, that result in the use of 230 across the year.
“After several analyses and simulations, the team proposed a different configuration with 36 parts on one single layer, and the removal of the dunnage,” explained Dávila. “We had the opportunity to allocate 4,300 parts in a trailer and that reduced the requirement for trailers down to 115 for the year.”
In a second example showing how packaging team was able to maximise the trailer fill rate (TFR) for a part used in the Nissan Rogue, Dávila compared the rack design used for the part in Japan and the rack used in the US for the same identical part. While the SNP on the Japanese-designed rack was 50 parts compared to the 45 parts per rack in the US, the TFR on the US design was 88% compared to 70% for the one in Japan thanks to the rack design. The US rack design increased transport cost optimisation by +38% by fitting 3,510 parts per trailer compared to the 2,200 fitted per trailer in Japan.
Advertisement
Packaging by design
Dávila then pointed to the impact of part design on packaging optimisation and how important it is for packaging engineers to have input at the earliest phases of parts design.
“Part dimensions drive transportation efficiency – the larger the parts, the lower the SNP and the fewer parts per trailer,” said Dávila. That means more trailers required to move the same volume.”
Taking a particular Nissan headlamp as an example he showed how the updated design had halved the number of units per rack from 24 to 12, meaning the parts per trailer dropped from 900 to 624 and the number of trailer required in a year to move the headlamps increased from 1,000 to 1,600. An additional impact on the transport efficiency is that the headlamp is now sourced in San Luis Potosi in Mexico rather than Alabama in the US, as the previous version of the headlamp was.
“The message is that we are reducing our ability to move parts in the same trailer and we are increasing the distance, with a -54% loss of transport efficiency here,” said Dávila.
That impact on transport efficiency highlights how important is the feedback from supply chain to design to tackle the impact on efficiency over the seven years of the model lifecycle. “We are trying to share this feedback with the early phases to our counterparts in Japan, trying to let them know how this is going to impact transport efficiency for the forthcoming products,” said Dávila.
In a final example of where transport efficiency is impacted by parts complexity, Dávila used the example of a part structure (A) that had an SNP of 16 per rack, requiring 780 trailers across the year. Using a previous model generation structure (B) the SNP increased to 126 and the annual number of trailers was reduced to 160, meaning a transport efficiency gain of +80%. Again, the message from Dávila was that supply chain managers need to influence transport efficiency as early as the part design phase and try to influence what is going to be the best for the company across five years of production.
New opportunities
At Nissan there are a number of new opportunities for packaging development that can help it optimise parts packaging and by direct association the efficiency of its inbound transport logistics. Those opportunities include the continued development of expertise and talent in packaging engineering, as well as the early involvement with design and R&D to connect transport efficiency with parts design.
As well as finding transport efficiency on the roads through packaging optimisation and parts design, it is important to look at find greater efficiency for the movement of parts on autonomous guided vehicles, automated storage and retrieval systems and even humanoid robots.
Dávila also pointed to standardisation for EV components and the advantages that 3D printing gives packaging designers. “3D printing is a great solution that we used in Mexico,” he explained. “In the trial phases it is difficult to get access to prototype parts, so we made 3D prints based on the CAD information and created simulations on the best packaging efficiency. That is good for the design phase.”
Dávila also said that the use of lighter and recyclable materials would bring sustainable benefits and greater integration of IoT sensors to monitor vibration and temperature, as well as RFID technology and geolocation for tracking of parts, were areas that Nissan was working on to improve inbound logistics and supply chain management.
