Author

Tuba Aijaz

Degree

Master of Business Administration Executive

Faculty / School

Faculty of Business Administration (FBA)

Year of Award

2016

Advisor/Supervisor

Faisal Jalal

Project Type

MBA Executive Research Project

Access Type

Restricted Access

Executive Summary

This project has been implemented in The Searle Company Ltd. that addressed the solution for the complaints received from Searle’s distributors i.e. IBL distributors. The major problems highlighted by them were damaged cartons and shortages. The project followed the DCOR model framework which focused on 3 areas.

  • Standardization of shippers
  • Replacement of Gum Tape with PVC tape
  • Standardization of packing belt formation

Both quantitative and qualitative research was conducted and various options were evaluated. A survey questionnaire was sent to all Branch Managers of IBL distributors where focus was to gather the data for damaged cartons, open cartons and number of packs. Besides, the employees were also interviewed who were the part of packaging operation. Here the focus was to get the feedback related to carton quality and investigations on the frequent damages of carton.

During research, some areas were highlighted that were not being complaint but had the impact on the problem. Data for existing shippers were collected and various aspects were studied like cost per carton, freight cost, packaging process, total average annual cost, quality, process time optimization, presentation, brand etc. Then new dimensions for shippers were designed according to the dimensions of the primary packaging such that there was no space left in the cartons and packaging orientation was standardized.

Besides, when the problem for shortages was investigated, it was found that gum tape adhesion is not uniform and takes a lot of time in packaging operation. For this, data for the gum tape was collected like its application and cost and then it was compared with PVC tape that had uniform adhesion with less application and overall cost.

During the study for replacement of gum tape with PVC tape for the time taken on its application, a new area was focused i.e. packing belt formation. It was observed that packaging process was not only delayed due to application of gum tape on the shippers but the packing belt is not appropriately formed. So three options were proposed out of which one was standardized that had considerable cost saving effect.

The results were prominent. The new standardize cartons facilitated easy handling, provided better ergonomics, reduced logistic cost, minimized process time at the packaging stage, and eliminated probability of shortages. The most important is that all the above were achieved without incurring cost. Not only the cost not incurred but cost was saved.

Pages

viii, 86

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