Building Products Manufacturer - Case Study

A manufacturer of window and building products relied on wooden block spacers to separate and protect window units during transport. While effective at spacing, the wooden blocks required significant manual labor to assemble and posed safety risks on the packaging floor.

Employees were required to staple two small wooden pieces together for each spacer, a repetitive task that increased labor time and led to hand injuries when staples missed the wood. In addition to safety and labor concerns, the manufacturer needed assurance that any replacement spacer would maintain load stability and package integrity throughout shipping.

Goals:

• Identify a lower-cost spacer solution that reduces material usage and overall handling time.
• Remove manual, repetitive assembly steps from the packaging process.
• Address safety concerns by eliminating the need for stapling during spacer assembly.
• Validate that any new spacer solution maintains load stability under real shipping conditions.

Rocket Industrial partnered with the manufacturer to engineer a safer and more efficient spacer solution. After evaluating the existing wooden spacer process, Rocket recommended replacing the wood blocks with custom honeycomb pads designed to provide consistent strength and rigidity, ensuring the spacers would not compress during transportation.

To validate performance, Rocket’s packaging engineer team conducted extensive in-house testing, including:

• Vibration testing to simulate transportation conditions
• Incline impact testing to verify load stability during handling and transport
• A real-world round-trip shipment using the manufacturer’s own truck

Testing confirmed the honeycomb pads remained securely in place, did not compress, and provided reliable protection throughout transport.

• $14,577 in annual material cost savings
• Eliminated manual spacer assembly and associated labor
• Improved worker safety by removing stapling from the process
• Proven load stability during transport

Rocket Industrial implemented a custom-engineered honeycomb spacer solution that reduced costs, improved safety, and streamlined packaging operations. By replacing labor-intensive wooden spacers, the manufacturer achieved measurable cost and labor savings while maintaining consistent load stability and package integrity.