ISTA Forum 2020 Video Proceedings

 

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PURPOSE:  There has been much discussion about sustainability in cold chain packaging over the recent years, with many claims and more options than ever for end-users to choose from. In this discussion, we'll take a broader look at sustainability, the definitions and regulatory environment surrounding it, and how it is best integrated into cold chain design practices. 

We'll discuss how to weigh the traits, qualities, and goals customers have and how to prioritize them, the importance of 3rd party verification, and how to best mitigate risk.   

We will also delve into the storytelling aspect surrounding sustainability and the importance of educating the end-user on the best practices of disposal and the sustainability landscape as a whole. 

FINDING: The presentation will outline our approach to addressing the customer (and their customer's) priorities and decision paths we've encountered to address the evolving sustainable packaging demand. 

 

Amir Ghoddousi
Director of Sales
UPS Capital







 

 

Unpredictable events like damage, loss and delay can be devastating to a brands reputation, not to mention their bottom line. Self-insuring or relying on carrier liability leaves significant gaps in coverage, making companies susceptible to glitches in their supply chain. Throughout this discussion we will explore the existing risks in the logistics industry, how a comprehensive insurance solution can alleviate these risks and ultimately how sufficient packaging is key to a successful supply chain.

 

Biography: Amir Ghoddousi received his B.S. from Michigan State University in Packaging Engineering, and is currently an EMBA Candidate at the University of Notre Dame Mendoza College of Business. Starting his career at UPS as a Packaging Engineer, Amir has since gained experience in Account Management, Customer Experience, and currently holds the title of Director of Sales at UPS Capital.

 

Eric Hiser
Vice President of Technical
ISTA

 

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Use Of Simulation To Determine Cause Of Temperature Excursion During Transit

Jeena James Kulangara 
Thermal Design Engineer 
Cold Chain Technologies LLC 

 

• Thermal shipping systems may see excursions during transit, despite the rigorous test conditions in operational thermal qualification.
• The key parameters that affect the performance of the shipping system during shipment are ambient temperature profile, thermal properties of the product load, and pack out.
• Simulation models are used to quickly determine the approximate temperature of the payloads in shipping systems without testing the scenario in thermal chambers.
• With reasonable data and assumptions, simulations aid in determining the causes of temperature excursion during transit, preventing the loss of temperature sensitive drugs and reducing failure rates in the field.

Biography: A man who has learned from experience to lead by following, Robby Martin is a husband, father and a really good friend to have in your corner. In the ever-changing world of Packaging & Manufacturing for over thirty years, Robby excels at removing chaos from the process by providing coordination, support and direction to projects ranging from simple manufacturing optimizations to national launches of major brand platforms. Today he supports Bush Brothers & Company with their New Product Innovation efforts as an Engineering Technologist. He specializes in Manufacturing Partner Engagement and New Product Launch Execution. Robby is also a Certified John Maxwell Speaker and Coach. His greatest passion is helping others make their way through the confounding world of personal and professional growth.

 

 

Rodney L Prater
Principal Packaging COE
SC Johnson

How do we properly design, test and validate our product to withstand the rigor of distribution within a region and from one region to another region?

Solution:  Understand your supply chain handling process and create a test protocol for more robust and faster validation.

Opportunity: Create an intuitive, informative and interactive process map of SC Johnsons global supply chain environment to assist in product development and validation.  Utilize process maps to create regional simulated distribution test protocols.  Additionally create a BCT (Box Compression Test) tool and PSF (Product Support Factor) procedure for a corrugate performance-based specification that is supplier agnostic based on the regional supply chain criteria.
 
Takeaways:

Biography: Graduate of Michigan State University with a B.S. in Packaging and over 25 years in packaging industry.  Employed at SC Johnson for 20 years in the current role as a Principal Packaging COE.  Member of ASTM D10 Committee for past 3 years.  Serves as an Executive Board of Director, Aerosol Division, of the Household & Commercial Products Association (HCPA).  Member of the Plastic Aerosol Research Group LLC (PARG) and previously served 5 years as Co-Chair of the PARG Technical Committee, leading the development and validation of 22 new voluntary industry standards and methods and publishing two technical white papers as related to the study of automobile cabin temperatures and UV exposure impacts to a pressurized plastic aerosol container.  Additionally, he manages the distribution test laboratory at SC Johnson and applicable distribution test protocols.

 

Lucas Magnant 
Packaging Engineering Manager
Keurig Dr Pepper

 

 

Designing for single parcel distribution poses many challenges associated with cost, material limitation, aesthetic tradeoffs, and multi-channel compatibility. With the recent update to Amazon's SIOC program, many CPGs are having to confront these challenges to avoid chargebacks and ultimately practice 'responsible packaging by design.' As an early adopter of the SIOC program, Keurig Dr Pepper has implemented numerous packaging changes to enable SIOC compliance and an omni-channel focused packaging portfolio. Having cycled through this program several times, we'd like to share key learnings and best practices for the major phases of the certification process; eligibility assessment, test execution, and enrollment.

Takeaways: This presentation is aimed at sharing KDP's day-to-day interaction with Amazon's SIOC certification process. Ground-level perspective and lessons learned will be highlighted by real-world examples. This is meant to be thought-provoking and help you tailor your organization's approach when participating in the program.

Kara Revoir Biography: Education: BS Biological Engineering, Cornell University, 2010. Kara spent her early professional career as a Process Development Engineer and has recently moved into Packaging Engineering. She is focused on packaging performance across KDP's many distribution channels and is responsible for major network-wide productivity initiatives. ISTA CPLP Technologist.

Lucas Magnant Biography: Education: BS Packaging Engineering, Rochester Institute of Technology, 2011. Luke currently works at Keurig Dr Pepper as the Packaging Engineering Manager responsible for secondary/tertiary packaging and management of KDP's ISTA-certified dynamics lab. ISTA CPLP Technologist.

 

Shane Messner 
Student
California Polytechnic State University



Marilyn Nguyen 
Student
California Polytechnic State University

 

Corrugated container bulging impacts the packaging industry by affecting pallet load destabilization, compromising container strength, and vibration damage. Bulging changes the geometric shape of the container, causing the palletized load to take up more space than anticipated. This causes the stretch wrap to contact other surfaces during transit which leads to tears and further unit load destabilization. The purpose of this study is to identify a relationship between bulging and container design elements such as styles and dimensions. The findings of this study will assist packaging engineers to reduce material usage, maximize container stacking strength and rigidity. The study is intended to showcase the significance of quantifying container bulge towards developing optimum distribution packages.  
 
Takeaways: Packaging engineers will have a way to quantify and predict package bulging. The methodology can be used to assist the industry in selecting optimum corrugated fiberboard containers towards minimizing undesirable bulging related issues in distribution related activities.

Shane Messner Biography: Shane Messner is currently in his final year as an undergraduate student in the Industrial Technology and Packaging program at Cal Poly University. His interests include packaging testing for optimal protective packaging design and packaging sustainability. In 2019, Shane worked on a research project for Cal Poly to understand the impact of corrugated container design and environmental conditions on its bulging performance in distribution.

Marilyn Nguyen Biography: Marilyn is in her senior year as an Industrial Technology and Packaging undergrad student at Cal Poly. Within the world of packaging, she is especially interested in innovative package designs that not only protect the product but also provide a unique experience for the consumer. Marilyn has worked at Applied Medical in Rancho Santa Margarita, CA as an packaging intern, helping optimize the manufacturing process for laparoscopic medical devices.

Jay Singh 
Professor & Director 
California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo






Grant Badstubner 
Instruments Product Manager 
Lansmont Corporation

 

 

From the perspective of eventually developing representative pre-shipment test protocols, this ISTA supported study undertook an extensive instrumented evaluation of (1) the land routes associated with the movement of CPGs within, near and between the Jawaharlal Nehru Port (Mumbai) and New Delhi, and (2) small parcel shipments between four major cities in India. 39 instrumented trials spanning over 11,600 kilometers of land routes for the distribution of CPGs associated with six major companies were included in the study. The small parcel trials involved 36 instrumented shipments using two major couriers over approximately 10,000 kilometers of distribution activities. This presentation summarizes the distribution environment data collected for the distribution of CPGs and small parcel shipments. 

Takeaways:  Primarily due to economic growth, increasing participation from foreign and private players, policy support, innovation in financing and an astounding online retail growth, the Indian retail industry is one of the fastest growing markets in the world. This presentation avails the attendees with an opportunity to understand distribution activities unique to India. The outcome of this study is aimed at developing currently outdated/limited pre-shipment test protocols for distribution practices specific to India.

Jay Singh Biography: Jay received his MS and PhD in Packaging Science from Michigan State University. Considered amongst the top experts in the field of distribution packaging globally, Jay has published over 95 peer-reviewed articles, 73 articles in conference proceedings, 32 trade journal articles, 3 book chapters, coauthored 2 books and edited 1 book. A number of his publications have resulted in development/modification of numerous globally acknowledged packaging test standards. Jay currently serves as the President of International Association of Packaging Research Institutes (IAPRI) and is a past Director on International Safe Transit Associations (ISTA) Global Board. Having undertaken funded research of over $5.3+ million from state, federal agencies and industry as well as currently holding four patents, Jay was recognized with the Distinguished Scholarship Award in 2017 by Cal Poly. Jay is also the recipient of the ISTA 2019 R. David LeButt Award.

Grand Badstubner Biography: Grant Badstubner holds an MS in Packaging Value Chain and a BS in Industrial Technology from Cal Poly SLO. He is currently the Product Manager for the SAVER and Test Partner product lines at Lansmont Corporation in Monterey, California. In his 3 years at Lansmont Corporation, Grant has participated in half a dozen distribution measurement projects for a variety of companies in the CPG and medical industries. His hands-on experience with field data collection and analysis empowers customers to make data-driven decisions based on real-world dynamics. When he isnt busy with work or school, Grant enjoys travel, scuba diving, and golf.

 

In recent years Eli Lilly has increasingly relied on simulation of vibration during product development to reduce the risk of damage during product transportation. Currently, our approach is to use both compressed and uncompressed vibration profiles to ensure that the product is robust to vibration of both high amplitude and long duration. As biological drug molecules become more complex and more varied, we are beginning to encounter products for which compressed vibration testing can predict damage that is not observed during over the road shipping studies and uncompressed vibration testing based on average PSDs can fail to predict damage that is observed during over the road shipping studies.
 
This creates a need for more precise simulation tools. We need vibration profiles that combine accurate high, medium and low stress levels in realistic proportions in a single test with a worst-case transportation timeline. The multi-level profiles provided in ASTM 4169-16 are a step in this direction, but they are based on the standard steel spring truck model, and we need to have both steel spring and air ride models as well as models for air and rail transport.  Furthermore, we would like to base these models on our own specific shipping lanes. 
 
Lilly has developed profiles that adjust the vibration level to the 95th percentile and compensate for kurtosis to the extent possible using academically recognized methods, but these profiles apply the same compensation factor at each frequency and apply the same profile for the entire simulation.
As a result, these profiles still miss the peak values above 95% and badly overtest the mid-level values between 50 and 95%.

In addition, the kurtosis calculation is somewhat complex and subject to debate, and the 95th percentile PSD is based on a group of average PSDs, not on the fundamental vibration data.  
 
Takeaways: This presentation will seek to explain what is meant by 'Constructed Probability' and how it can be applied to vibration testing of transportation systems.The engineering context in terms of needs and issues surrounding monitoring and simulation of vibration and shock during distribution of commercial products will be reviewed, with emphasis on opportunities for improvement.

Biography: I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and earned a BS in Engineering from Boston University and an MS in Engineering from MIT.  Prior to joining Eli Lilly in 2003, I worked as a navigation systems engineer for Northrup, in product development and sales for a spin-off from Woods Hole Oceanographic, in development of mobile inspection robots for hazardous environments at Raytheon and, for a short time, as a program manager at Enron, responsible for quality assurance for the Lilly contract.  At Lilly I have supported Facilities Delivery, Device Development, Serialization and Packaging Engineering.  For the past two years I have been leading the vibration testing program.

Alberto Tellechea 
CEO 
Safe Load Testing Technologies

 

 

Regarding the increasing interest of transport authorities and the scientist community about the load stability during transportation and its right simulation at laboratory, several works have been done and published. One of the theoretical studies presented at IAPRI 2019, with the title 'Emergency braking and Stability testing, Response Analysis' showed why the horizontal natural frequency of the unit load it is determinant for the response level of the unit load subjected to that acceleration curve. In that study was demonstrated that a maximum of 200 ms time jerk duration to get the steady acceleration following by a minimum of 300ms time dwell duration of a trapezoidal pulse it is required to get exactly the same response as produced in a real emergency braking for unit loads of horizontal natural frequency greater than 1,2 Hz. Because It's hard to understand how a test shortest than 1s can simulate the effect of a real braking of the same intensity which can hold several seconds, we have undertaken a new practical study using a real unit load inside a vehicle. This unit load has been monitored with high speed cameras and other devices to measure the real deformation and accelerations that this unit load is going to reach during the transportation acceleration events. This deformation has been compared with the deformation produced on the unit load simulating the real acceleration event with different dwell durations in the laboratory using a horizontal stability machine, in order to visualize the low deviation that we obtain from real world versus simulation in the laboratory. 

Biography: Alberto Tellechea is the CEO of Safe Load Testing Technologies, an international supplier of transport simulation solutions for packaging optimization and validation. He is Industrial Engineer by Polytechnic University of Valencia, major in Management and holds an MBA from the School of Industrial Organization of Madrid. Alberto counts with more than 10 years of experience in General Management of companies belonging to several industrial sectors such as machinery, ceramics, plastic engineering and the transfer of industrial fluids. Currently Alberto is member board of EUMOS and collaborates in working groups of the most important committees in the packaging testing field: IAPRI, ISTA, EUMOS. 

Anthony Theriault
Packaging Product Test Engineer
Bureau Veritas

 

The presentation will explore the world of ecommerce distribution. There will be firsthand experience shared, demonstrating the new hazards this form of distribution has created. This will be contrasted against traditional shipping environments, in hopes to demonstrate a new approach to package design and testing evaluations may now be a necessity.

Takeaways: Attendees should be able to form a connection between laboratory test simulations and how they relate to the real world. They should be able to take away at least a few examples of potential real world hazards they may have overlooked when analyzing individually packaged product distribution networks. It will provide insight they can apply to their own distribution simulation strategies.

The goal is to remove preconceived notions about the world of ecommerce distribution based on data and experiences from traditional warehousing and shipping networks.

Biography: Anthony is a graduate of Packaging Science program at The Rochester Institute of Technology. He has been working in the shipping and packaging industry for the over 10 years and is a CPLP Technologist. He currently leads the Amazon ISTA-6 testing team at Bureau Veritas and is focused on innovations for growing world of e-commerce distribution testing.

Alex Turner
Packaging Consultant, Packaging Engineer
Chainalytics

 

Eileen Reidy
Packaging Engineer
The Home Depot





 

From 2017 to 2018, The Home Depot the worlds largest home improvement retailer with more than 2,200 stores in North America and over 1 million products available in its physical and online stores experienced significant damage costs from in-store markdowns and customer returns across three of its tile product subclasses all of which were coming from a single manufacturer. Recognizing the need to drive tangible change and execute improvements within a cross-functional team, The Home Depot partnered with Chainalytics to gain a better understanding of its end-to-end supply chain hazards as well as develop effective packaging solutions and packaging design guidelines. 
 
In this session, The Home Depot will explain how they tackled the extraordinary damage rates and costs within this fragile product category, why they chose to leverage an external partner for the supply chain assessment and solution development phases, and what value has been created by the recommended packaging and process changes. 

Takeaways:  

 
Alex's Biography: Alex is a Consultant in the Packaging Optimization practice at Chainalytics. In this role, he provides end-to-end engineering support for packaging optimization projects, working to ensure solutions improve costs, improve packaging performance, and consider environmental impacts. Education: Michigan State University 2017 - B.S. Packaging. Job Title: Packaging Consultant, Packaging Engineer at Chainalytics. Professional Achievements: CPIT (Certified Packaging Professional in Training), CAPM (Certified Associate in Project Management). Industry Experience: Electronics, Consumer Products, Medical, Retail, Industrial, Large Appliances.

Eileen's Biography: Eileen graduated with a bachelors degree in Packaging Science from Michigan State University in 2017. Currently, Eileen is a packaging engineer for the Global Brand & Product Development team at The Home Depot, specifically focusing on hard and soft surface flooring and packaging sustainability.