You can now expand the functionality of your packing operations to calculate the packing time as well as the required quantity of the most suitably defined Cartons needed for the job.

There are two parts to setting this up 

1. Material (the carton definitions) 
   

2. Packing Operation.
   

1. Material (Raw Material Admin)
   
   

The Boxes / Cartons used for despatch are defined in Materials Admin.

For the calculation to work the Calc Type MUST be set to ‘Job – kilogram weight’ (or ‘Job – pound Weight’ on Imperial sites)

Next enter information in the ‘Units’ field.

Unlike other ‘units’ fields where we can select from defined stock units like  /1, /500, etc,  this field is not a selector but instead it is a free type text field.

The value entered here appears on the Job Bag.

2. Packing Operation
   
   

The packing operation is set up as a “Job – Other Job Finishing” operation with no parameters, sub operations or imposition requirements.

Component Groups and References should not be required for a simple setup / configuration, but if needed they do allow better control when you may have more than one carton for a particular size (for example Branded and Plain boxes)

Alternatively, you could set up two operations for Packing – into Branded or Plain cartons.

The component records should specify the Max Unit Width and Depth of items that will fit into the carton (Production Options)

The Material Set on the record should be the material that relates to the maximum dimensions entered (Resources)

Set up charging as required, applying base charge, labour rates and / or click charges.

Finally, in Material Options there is a new field called Mat Weight Multi.

As the name suggests this is currently a multiplier (this will be updated to allow direct entry of the number of Kgs or lbs that the carton can hold).

To determine the correct value for this field, you need to divide 1 by the number of kgs or lbs in the box.

For example, if a carton can hold 20kgs the calculation would be 1 / 20 = 0.05 (as above)

If a carton can hold 20lbs, the calculation is exactly the same.

When quoting with this operation, IQ will determine the best carton to use and the number of them required.

It takes the job weight and divides it by the max weight the carton can hold and rounds the result up to return the number needed to dispatch the whole job without any user interaction.