Crating as a Service

 

 

Product or Service?

There are two ways to think of crates in the industrial manufacturing context. In the first instance, a crate is a product. It is bought, sold and held as any product. In the second instance, a crate is a service, provided by a crating company. Though most manufacturers think of crates as products that help their own products get from A to B, we’ll explain why you might want to start thinking of crating as a service.

Remember when you would go to the computer store and buy software? You’d take the box home and put a CD or a floppy disk into the disk drive (!) and then you would install the software onto your computer.

These days the most important pieces of software are not one-time downloads that you install, but rather services that are continually updated from a software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider. At the enterprise level, this is an important distinction because SaaS allows the software provider to tailor the software to the business’ changing needs, providing different functionality that is built uniquely for each client.
 

Why You Should Start Thinking of Crating as a Service

The idea of crating as a service may sound a bit overwrought, but there are a number of good reasons to think of crating in terms of service rather than as a product. Here are a few of them:

• Products imply inventory. Crates are difficult to hold as inventory.

  If you are in the industrial manufacturing sector, you may not be in a position to maintain an inventory of custom crates in order to send out your products. Empty crates take up an incredible amount of space and any product design changes can render your crate inventory unusable. Instead, you need the crate to be custom built at the same time the product is getting ready to ship. This means coordinating supply with a crating company who can meet just-in-time supply needs.

• Crating as a service means doing the crating at YOUR facility, on YOUR schedule.

  One thing that service providers do is provide service at your facility, when you need it. A crating company that can come to your facility with everything they need to crate and pack your items is providing a service that goes beyond simply sending crates to your facility or requiring you to ship the items to be crated at the crater’s facility. Service means working with you and your needs to help you do what you do best, without having to worry about service providers doing their job.

• Providing expertise as needed to develop better crating solutions.

  When you think of buying crates as products, the onus to choose the right product falls on the buyer. Crating-as-a-service means that the service provider anticipates and expertly navigates the client’s needs, so that the product is custom-made to meet those requirements. Part of the service that we provide is helping you understand the options, and advising you on the best way to protect the item in transit, as we simultaneously package the item. We do not maintain a catalog of standard items we then try to push out to our customers regardless of their actual requirements.

• A business relationship between enterprise and service provider

  Another reason to think of crating as a service is it emphasizes an ongoing relationship between the manufacturer and the service provider. Many of our clients have been repeat clients for years, even decades. We take great pride in being their number-one service provider for crating solutions, and that means being ready to respond to and even anticipate their needs: having the materials on hand to furnish custom crates with short turn-around-time, being flexible with orders and processes, and providing consistent, reliable craftsmanship while constantly improving our custom crates. A service provider considers the whole process of quoting, ordering, manufacturing, delivery and customers’ ongoing demand cycle rather than just producing a product that will conclude the business relationship.

Rely on Reid For Crating Service

Crating-As-A Service is a great way to think about the complex needs that a leading custom industrial crater can respond to. At Reid Packaging we take great pride in the crating service we provide to clients, responding to and even anticipating their crating needs. Get in touch if you would like to see what great crating service looks like.