How Best to Deal with Shipping Broken Ceramics

Ceramics and pottery are fragile materials to begin with. How many times has your business ordered a bulk-order shipment of ceramics that – despite all the best packaging efforts and intentions – still contained a few cases of “broken crockery?” While a few bad apples in one shipment don’t mean especially much (at least usually), the costs mount up if you’re running a long-term ceramics shipment program. There may even be the necessity of sending away of these ceramics for repairs and refurbishment… this usually calls for even more precautionary packaging and box partitioning to ensure that the already broken pieces don’t arrive even more “defected”.

Of course, one can go the low-budget route of simply adding bits and pieces of newspaper and discarded bubble-wrap to help protect one’s items, but this is hardly feasible when it comes to more high-end ceramics. One of the best solutions for shipping broken high-end ceramics is by using specially customized partitioning inside your delivery boxes. Not only does the highly precise nature of each individual partitioning square allow for very little “wiggle room” for ceramics to break, but the material with which the partitioning gets made can be engineered to be especially accommodating and impact-resistant. M & M provides just these kinds of materials and packaging services. With the right customized level of quality at your beck and call, you’ll soon see that – just like spilled milk – there’s little use fretting over broken ceramics. Sit back for once and let the partitioning experts help on the job!

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We Want to Know from Our Readers – What Kinds of Projects Are You Making These Days?

Let’s be clear and forthright that much of the goal of writing a social media blog is to convey one’s own, clear message to the waiting ears of Joe Q. Public, and – hopefully – sell some products and/or make some business friends along the way. But there’s really more to it than that, isn’t there? A lot more. Social media isn’t just about talking about one brand till one’s face turns blue – though that’s a great and useful part of it. No… another, equally valid part of social media is getting customer/blog reader feedback about their own experiences. Since we’re a box partitioning company, we want to ask you a simple question: what are you working on these days?

In the packaging, partitioning, warehousing, or transporting of various consumer goods – everything from consumer electronics to packaged food – we can only imagine how many different kinds of applications you might be developing at your business right now. Not only do we want to know what kinds of assignments you’re working on these days, but if they require a certain level of quality delivery shipping and handling to ensure they make it to the customer on time and in one piece? Are you an electronics company who ships its components from China and Taiwan to the States and Canada? Are you an automotive parts manufacturer or supplier who does a steady living at building new product, but wonders if there might be a way to match product quality with packaging quality?

We’d love to hear from you, both and now and over the ongoing months. Whether or not we end up doing business together is pretty much irrelevant – most likely we aren’t, nor have we ever. But it would give our company a better sense of where it’s headed, and possibly help your own business articulate a better, clearer vision of the “Next Big Thing” you’re seeking to develop and package.

Let us know when you can. You can call us at 800-992-3557, or email us at jrm@mmboxpartitions.com. Good packaging is a nice and easy convenience to you. To us, it’s a way of life.

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Globalization, a Two-Way Street: the “Re-Shoring” of American Manufacturing

The vicissitudes of today’s global economy seem to be drawing American businesses back home. As the markets teeter this way and that in alternating states of optimism and despair, US business-owners are seeking to reduce the length of their supply chains with the expectation that a reduced supply chain will allow them more direct control of the products and services they provide for their customers. Apple, Inc., for instance, is now showing signs of removing some of its hardware and software engineering officers in China and relocating them close by its headquarters in Cupertino, CA. Everything from steel milling, to automotive part fabrication, to printed circuit boards, and to common household items such as glassware and ceramics have been trickling back to these shores. While the past month has seen a slight decline – the first of its kind in over three years – in American manufacturing capacity, the overall trend continues to spike upwards.

The packaging industry – including our own partitioning industry – has a prime opportunity of seizing upon this trend of shorter supply chains. With quicker delivery times, no overseas shipping costs, and – pound for a pound – a superior overall product quality, American packaging and materials handling companies are standing by to help jump start the new resurgence in domestic manufacturing and delivery services. Being that we are one of the long-standing, stalwart companies in box partitions, egg crating, and being that our location in Chicago puts us at the hub of all North American commerce, the time seems ripe for M&M Box Partitions to make its services felt that much more to its clientele, as well as help America continue its slow, painful climb up and away from the “Great Recession”.

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The Electronics Supply Chain: a Macro-Level View

Since we’re a company deeply involved in the packaging of electronics goods, we thought we’d share this story: as of this year, large companies like Apple and Samsung have grown increasingly dominant in setting the agenda for the international electronics supply chain. In other words, companies like Apple (or Samsung, or Hewlett-Packard, or Dell) have increased their total spending on semiconductors manufactured from overseas. By doing so, they put themselves in a better position at determining what prices semiconductor and printed circuit board manufacturers should set their products at. The name-brand competition is fierce, with Apple spending $29B alone on OEM semiconductor products. Samsung comes in second at $14.9B, Hewlett-Packard comes in third at $13.7Bm and Dell comes next at $10.2B.

Other top-of-the-game players include such household brand-names as Sony, Panasonic, Cisco Systems, Canon, Toshiba, and Fujitsu. All of this fierce but friendly competition in semiconductor spending can only mean great things not only for OEM circuit and electronics manufacturers, but those in the electronics packaging industry as well. With such a huge number of OEMs getting in on the act of supplying the mega-companies with quality product, it’s a vast opportunity that few packaging companies would care to miss out on. With our own extensive history of providing box partitioning for electronic components, we at M&M feel as though we are in the right space at the right time. Let the packaging – and partitioning – begin!

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