Effective Planning Reduces Waste

Inventory planning and waste tracking are essential components for reducing business waste. These tools can also create opportunities for new ideas, new products, and further waste reduction. 

Operations and Planning at Elevate Packaging

At Elevate, our effective planning ensures that we remain in stock. This rigor has been particularly important in recent years. As multiple industries have faced shortages and supply chain problems, we’ve been able to deliver the compostable packaging you need to run your business.

Planning also helps us track and reduce production waste. We’re able to use our materials as efficiently as possible and send any material offcuts to be composted with one of our compost partners. Our materials, inventory, and waste tracking strategies have enabled us to quickly introduce new products and extensions to existing product lines! 

For the first production run of our  1oz White Compostable Stand Up Pouch we took advantage of an existing production schedule and material offcuts. 

Creative Opportunities to Reduce Waste

With a little creative thinking, what we might normally think of as waste can actually be an opportunity! 

Elevate’s production and inventory planning allow us to be flexible. Knowing what materials we have on hand at all times enables us to act quickly when opportunities arise to further reduce waste. 

In the case of our  1oz White Stand Up Pouches, we could act quickly because we had collected the following key insights: 

1. Planning inventory and tracking material
   We already had a production of  1oz Kraft stand up pouches lined up. Adding a different material to the same production run takes less time, lowers costs, and requires minimal set-up when compared to creating them separately. 
2. Tracking production waste
   We closely track material use and waste production. We knew that we had a narrow offcut of white material from a prior production run that would have otherwise been unusable. 
3. Recording customer feedback
   We closely monitor all customer feedback and product requests. We had recorded several requests for our 1oz pouch size in white. 

Track and Analyze Waste Production

After you begin tracking your waste production, you may start to notice even more ways to reduce waste in your own business!

Here are a few ideas to get you started: 

• Use compostable packaging
  We’d be remiss if we didn’t mention that compostable packaging can significantly reduce the amount of waste your business creates! 
• Enhance inventory planning
  Effective planning ensures that you are able to stay in stock and meet customer demand without over-producing. 
• Use less material
  Ensure your designs use as little material as possible, this includes packaging! 
• Make use of “imperfect” products
  Sometimes mistakes happen in production. Instead of sending otherwise usable imperfect products to landfill you can sell them at a discount, donate them, or compost them! (if they’re compostable). 

Don’t see the compostable packaging you need? Let us know!
(Perhaps we can use leftover material to make it!)