Corrugated Box Manufacturing

CBMMS Product Overview

Corrugated paper board containers are extensively used in the packaging of industrial as well as consumer goods. Major products like crockery, automobile components, glassware, pharmaceuticals, soaps and cosmetics, biscuits etc require proper packing and with the growth of these industries, demand for corrugated boxes is encouraging.

Corrugated board is manufactured on large high-precision machinery lines called Corrugators. The corrugated medium is usually 127 g/m2 paperboard; higher grades are also available. It arrives to the corrugator’s on large rolls.

At the single-facer, it is heated, moistened, and formed into a fluted pattern on geared wheels. This is joined to a flat linerboard with a starch based adhesive to form single face board. At the double-backer, a second flat linerboard is adhered to the other side of the fluted medium to form single wall corrugated board. Linerboards are often craft paperboard (of various grades) but may be bleached white, mottled white, colored, or preprinted.

Flutes come in five basic heights and shapes - the most common are sizes are "A", "B", "C", "E" and "F" or micro flute. A-flute was the first to be developed and is the largest common flute profile. B-flute was next and is much smaller. C-flute followed and is between A and B in size. E-flute is smaller than B and F-flute is smaller yet.

The letter designation relates to the order that the flutes were invented, not the relative sizes. Flute size refers to the number of flutes per lineal foot. For example, "B" flute is approximately 1/4 inch from the top of one flute to the next (or 50 flutes per foot. (12in)). "C" Flute is 5/16 inch from flute to flute (or 42 flutes per lineal foot (12in)). "E" flute is 1/8 inch flute to flute (or 90 flutes per lineal foot (12in)). Board thickness is an unreliable metric, due to various manufacturing conditions. However, a rough guide is: "C" flute=5/32 inch thick, "B" flute=1/8 inch thick, "E" flute=1/16 inch thick. The most common flute size in corrugated boxes is "C" flute.”

Corrugated board is often graded by the basis weights of the linerboards, burst or mullen strength, edge crush test, or flat crush test. TAPPI and ASTM test methods for these are standardized.

The choice of corrugated medium, flute size, combining adhesive, and linerboards can be varied to engineer a corrugated board with specific properties to match a wide variety of potential uses. Double and triple-wall corrugated board is also produced for high stacking strength and puncture resistance.

The strength of a corrugated box starts with its material. A corrugated sheet consists of two major components - linerboard and medium. Linerboard is the flat paper that covers both sides of the sheet and the medium is the "fluted" or arched paper found between both liners. The flute, when anchored to the linerboards with a starched-based adhesive, resists bending and pressure from all directions. When placed vertically on its ends, the flutes form vertical columns, capable of supporting considerable amounts of weight.

This stage can made on different devices or on slitter, Box sizes are measured by using inner dimensions unless otherwise specified. The size of your contents actually determines the inner box dimensions. Usual, in USA, those dimensions are listed in the following sequence: Length (L) x Width (W) x Depth (D). Internationally, the dimensions are stated as Length (L) x Breadth (B) x Height (H). The corrugated board is creased or scored to provide controlled bending of the board. Most often, slots are cut to provide flaps on the box. Scoring and slotting can also be accomplished by die-cutting.

The most common box style is the Regular Slotted Container (RSC). All flaps are the same length and the major flaps meet in the center of the box.

The die-cut containers are manufactured on a die-cutter that cuts and creases the board. It is usually reserved for a more sophisticated pack style. This process requires a « form » that can be mounted around a cylinder, in which case the machine is called a rotary die-cutter, the other variant is called a flatbed die-cutter. As indicated by its name its form is flat. Once the converting process is over, the corrugated packaging is put on a pallet and can be delivered to the customer.

Nukiesoft “Corrugated Box Manufacturing Management System” (CBMMS) is designed as an integrated management system for Corrugated Box Manufacturing Industries using Information Technology (IT) solutions.

CBMMS application is software solution built to effectively and efficiently manage all business processes of Corrugated Box Manufacturing companies, the CBMMS manages all customer and order related data and to control scheduling and manufacturing process activities as well as for finished goods handling to enable customer order delivery target with optimum results .

For management overview CBMMS also be facilitated with a dashboard display both on graphical and numbers presentation of various data related to customer’s order and tracking every detail and status etc.

Details report and analysis data in both graphical and numbers are also available for each functional modules, such as for customer and order management, vendor and procurement data, user transaction data, Corrugating schedule, manufacturing progress, and finished goods handling including warehouse and delivery management, etc. CBMMS manufacturing lifecycle management application is designed to suite all business process related to Corrugated Box Manufacturing companies that meets most of these requirements.

CBMMS is the Solutions

Time to deliver is critical for fast moving in Corrugated Box manufacturing businesses. At CBMMS, we focus on quality and time to delivery of corrugated manufacturer product, combined with an innovative core workflow framework using industry standard components such as Microsoft Windows Workflow as our middleware built around a web based framework.

Our off the shelf workflow solutions, can be quickly configured and customized and implement workflow solutions that automate & speed up your business processes.

We provide our customers with competitive advantage through quicker time to market and time savings through streamlined automated process.

Traditional Workflow solutions are expensive to deploy and cumbersome to manage. CBMMS provides web based solution that helps you of the need to purchase hardware, upgrade environments and install software. CBMMS have innovated and built a core web workflow frame work that is highly configurable.

We have implemented several workflow-based applications using our core platform and using agile development processes to map our customer requirements that are delivered on a hosted or software service model. We have over 30 years of experience in business process mapping for the entire industries value chain that can manage complex business lifecycles.

CBMMS Functional Modules

The following modules simplified the descriptions of CBMMS’s functionalities that each business processes are grouped in the usual and structured organization.

RSC Box Design and Calculation:

Provides tool for sales and marketing in designing and calculating the cost and pricing of Regular Slotted Container Corrugated Box based on the box dimension, board type, flutes type, and material paper weight used, together with other related costs such as adhesive, corrugating, converting, printing, warehouse, and delivery. The design covers for both single face, single wall, double wall and triple wall corrugated box using any combination of selected flutes types such as Flute A, B, C, E and F.

The resulted design and calculated model may be saved as product design and pricing library which are accessible to the sales person or directly to the customer ordering process.

Customer and Order Manager:

The module manage customer data, customer contact data and any related customer document management system, and handles ordering process including customer request for quotation (RFQ), product and price quotation, and customer order data and customer invoicing data. The module also interact with the scheduling and manufacturing process to keep sales and marketing staff monitor every detail progress on each customer order.

When the system is connected to the internet, it allows your customers a limited access to your systems, and provides one-click order management for complex processes that link into your product design library management system. With its inbuilt workflow configuration you can quickly provision multiple types of order for customers. In today’s complex environments, effective order management is essential to manage inventory with ‘just in time’ ordering in place and complex multiple vendor provisioning environments.

Our order management solution provides the flexibility of workflow fulfillment, provisioning integrated with customer facing order management all on the web 24x7. CBMMS Order Management solutions have helped our customers to provide dedicated branded sales order channels online to customer, Integrate fulfillment, provisioning capabilities through workflow process management.

Provide transparency of the order provisioning process, to all stakeholders and reduce disputes, Control costs and optimize resources through multiple provisioning process requirements for each product type, E-enable the order processes with a Web-enabled system.

Provides all detailed information of customer order data, monitoring of all progress details, provide option for online marketing channel when the system is connected though the internet.

Corrugating Schedule & Optimization Manager:

Corrugated Scheduling and Optimization Manager is a comprehensive collaborative workflow driven application to effectively plan, manage, track and complete process of corrugated manufacturing on time. It helps users manage and complete manufacturing process and completing the works on time through effective monitoring of progress milestones, managing and tracking of the manufacturing progress at each stage.

The application gives a clear view of the production costs and also whether the customer delivery schedules are secured. With scheduling manager; you can search the proposed delivery date given by customers in your existing customer order database, any changes and earlier proposed delivery schedule. You can mobilize resources; manage manufacturing progress, search for manufacturing stages, manage identification and multiple manufacturing processes with the built-in milestone driven manufacturing management tool.

Provides Workflow-collaborative process driven application to plan, manage, track & complete manufacturing planning schedule.

Strong competition and the high demands of consumer goods companies for just-in-time delivery together with high standards of product and service quality are turning the top end of the corrugated-board box market into a very tough place to be. Customers order a large variety of different boxes, each with its own color scheme and product specific printing, and expect them to be delivered at very short notice.

These demands combined with the complexity of a multi-stage production process and the unpredictability of customer behavior and machine failures lead to larger and larger inventories of finished goods stock at corrugated box factories, all to be able to guarantee “on time and in full” deliveries to the clients.

Only to the uninitiated might a corrugated box factory seem like one of the simpler manufacturing environments, but the fact that each box has to be produced to exact customer specifications and the inherent tendency of customers to make last-minute order changes turns the manufacturing of corrugated boxes (at least in the high value end of the business, where customers demand just-in time delivery on very short notice) into one of the prime examples of a complex dynamic system. The fact that in a reasonably sized plant the production of even very large and complex runs would hardly take more than a couple of minutes on each machine is not much comfort to a seasoned plant manager.

Fixed machine set-times between each new run and the necessity of permanently high machine utilization due to the capital and labor intensity of manufacturing makes the detailed scheduling of all production jobs very necessary.

The result is that there was no genuine understanding of the relationships between customer order patterns, factory capacity, factory flexibility, robustness, machine speeds, order batching, warehouse size and on-time deliveries.

The problems arising in the management of a corrugated box factory can only be understood in detail using sophisticated scheduling and simulation technology. Our focus here is to be more specific rather than general, and ensure the resulting model is not only accurate, but has a fast run time for the given class of factories.

Manufacturing Manager:

This module provides control to the stage of corrugating, converting, cutting and printing process of the corrugated box manufacturing, by selecting an outstanding schedule and to proceed with the manufacturing process. The manufacturing plant on duty will work on the basis of priority and schedule as specified and designed in the scheduling process, to start with corrugating process first have to select from the outstanding order waiting for corrugating which is automatically listed when they are available, outstanding corrugating process will be listed in queue grouped by board type. Similarly this also applies for further process such as for converting, and printing process.

Finished Goods Handling Manager:

Manages finished goods handling process, such as labeling, dispatched to warehouse and delivery to customers. This tool allow you to manage your finished goods handling chain and enhance customer satisfaction by providing reliable information about order shipments as well as current inventory levels. You can keep track of product inventory, quantity at each warehouse, movement history, and stocking status, Inventory data is updated in real time so that you can extract insights to meet customer demand and expectations, the master data management feature in CBMMS lets you maintain item numbers and descriptions with detailed customer order data. With CBMMS Finished Goods Management, consistently prompt order fulfillment is within your reach. This application dramatically improves efficiency in picking, packing and shipping orders by streamlining day-to-day activities and maximizing the productivity of your warehouse staff.

With CBMMS Finished Goods Management, you can track inventory items by bins and containers, designating the items that move in and out of inventory. You’ll be able to prepare pick lists for items that need to be picked for sales orders, transfers, material requisitions and other transaction types; once a group of items has been extracted, you can print a master picking list that shows the inventory items to be picked.

System Administrator:

Provides function for user management access properties, each user may be assigned level of authorities using the application, and the system administrator may display various reports of the user transaction logging.

Executive Reporting Manager:

The Executive Reporting Manager helps the each level management to measure, monitor and compare the actual performance of business with pre-set goals through regular information reports, at the various levels of customer ordering, scheduling and manufacturing stages. It helps in ensuring better operations, thereby, helping the business remain fit in a competitive environment. Reporting Manager is built in CBMMS’s proprietary web-based. Users can select data columns, order data, and export data to Microsoft Excel. User can save reports, share reports.