The client reached out to Gain & Co in order to support them on their journey toward automated repacking process.

The biggest challenges were large industrial pallets leaving the production line, while retail stores wanted ready-to-sale pallets, nicely decorated in cardboard and displaying the products. The task of manual repacking was outsourced to another company and the client was too busy to source an automated solution internally.

Gain & Co proposed to help the customer by running the entire process of understanding their needs, describing those needs, and finding the right supplier and solution in the market.

Our senior engineering and procurement team visited the client for an onsite assessment of the current repacking process and further preparation of:

• Supplier catalogue

• Functional requirement specification

• Evaluation of solution proposals

Gain & Co conducted market research and listed the potential suppliers which had the best prerequisites and experience to provide a suitable solution, and prepared functional requirement specifications.

The functional requirements describing the needs and expectations for the repacking line provided the client with a detailed understanding of the subprocesses to be automated, as well as which ones are optional. As the requirements were kept on a functional level, the solution concept and design were left open for the supplier to suggest the optimal solution, based on their experience.

Gain & Co then conducted a sourcing process to receive and evaluate offers from the identified suppliers. This was done in several rounds and, based on Gain & Co ś recommendations, different solution concepts were proposed and customized for the client ś needs.

Our work identified strong benefits achieved by automating the manual repacking process.

The final delivery offered the client the full list of 22 identified suppliers, a shortlist of the 10 most relevant suppliers for the specific repacking solution, and 3 final offers applicable to the repacking process – the exact number of offers the client initially requested.

The potential for reducing the man-hours spent on the manual repacking task was 80- 90% by automating the process with standard technology.

The estimated productivity improvement potentials were 50%-70%, with an average expected payback period of ~3 years.