Packsize Introduces the Industry’s First Cloud Computing Platform with PackNet Cloud
The first-of-its-kind cloud platform empowers businesses to take a data-driven approach to packaging efficiency, enhancing productivity and customer satisfaction while reducing carbon footprint.
SALT LAKE CITY. August 29, 2023 – Today, Packsize®, the market leader in sustainable, right-sized, on-demand packaging, announced the launch of its PackNet® Cloud platform, the first and only cloud-enabled solution in the industry. This revolutionary production and optimization software seamlessly integrates with Packsize's On Demand Packaging® machines, offering unprecedented capabilities for carton machine management, box production, and packaging workflow integrations. With PackNet Cloud, businesses can thrive in a dynamic market while minimizing packaging waste.
"The new and improved PackNet Cloud represents a significant leap forward in packaging technology, making Packsize the industry's pioneer and sole provider of cloud capability," said Rod Gallaway, Chief Executive Officer at Packsize. "By harnessing the power of the cloud, businesses can unlock their full potential and achieve unrivaled levels of packaging efficiency. PackNet Cloud empowers businesses to optimize their packaging operations, reduce expenses, enhance customer satisfaction, and decrease their carbon footprint."
Key Features Include:
Multi-Tenant Environments: Scalability Without Compromising Security
PackNet Cloud enables multi-tenant environments, allowing businesses to scale flexibly and eliminate IT infrastructure concerns without compromising security and performance. Companies can leverage Packsize’s cloud-based technology to benefit from high availability and minimal data access delays through low-latency connections.
PackNet's security measures, including data encryption, device authentication, and real-time threat detection, ensure comprehensive risk mitigation. Businesses can tailor solutions to their needs by optimizing corrugated packaging production and easily integrating with ERP and WMS systems.
PackNet Cloud Reporting: Data-Driven Decision Making
PackNet Cloud Reporting provides real-time advanced data and analytics capabilities, offering businesses comprehensive insights to make data-driven decisions and optimize packaging operations. It also provides businesses with centralized data management, allowing for in-depth analysis and monitoring of packaging operations across multiple locations. It enables companies to proactively address challenges, improve efficiency, and enhance customer satisfaction.
PackNet Cloud Cube: Optimizing Carton Utilization
PackNet Cloud Cube accurately calculates the dimensions and weight of packages, determining the optimal box size for every order. By minimizing packaging materials and reducing shipping costs, PackNet Cloud Cube enhances cost efficiency and product protection during transit.
PackNet Cloud Cube's transition to the cloud significantly improves speed, scale, and security. It enables businesses to pack their products securely and efficiently, delivering a positive experience to their customers while optimizing their packaging resources.
PackNet Cloud Dim: Optimizing Package Size and Type
PackNet Cloud Dim revolutionizes packaging processes by automating size and type decisions based on supplemental product attributes or details beyond length, width, height, and weight. Leveraging advanced algorithms, PackNet Cloud Dim ensures more accurate and efficient packaging processes, resulting in optimized packaging size and type selection.
PackNet Cloud delivers continuous updates, advanced support, and round-the-clock technical assistance. This comprehensive approach equips businesses with essential information to effectively minimize material waste and enhance sustainability practices in real-time.
To learn more about PackNet Cloud, please visit www.packsize.com/software.
About Packsize
Packsize transforms how businesses and their customers experience packaging – from packing to unboxing. Since introducing Right-sized Packaging on Demand® in 2002, Packsize has become a recognized supply chain and sustainable packaging industry leader in North America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific. As a partner and trusted advisor, Packsize unlocks the hidden potential in its customers’ supply chain and creates custom packaging process flows that consider every step – from the warehouse floor to the customer’s hands. Packsize is reimagining packaging and accelerating the path to a more sustainable future. Follow Packsize on LinkedIn.
Economic activity in the logistics industry expanded in August, though growth slowed slightly from July, according to the most recent Logistics Manager’s Index report (LMI), released this week.
The August LMI registered 56.4, down from July’s reading of 56.6 but consistent with readings over the past four months. The August reading represents nine straight months of growth across the logistics industry.
The LMI is a monthly gauge of economic activity across warehousing, transportation, and logistics markets. An LMI above 50 indicates expansion, and a reading below 50 indicates contraction.
Inventory levels saw a marked change in August, increasing more than six points compared to July and breaking a three-month streak of contraction. The LMI researchers said this suggests that after running inventories down, companies are now building them back up in anticipation of fourth-quarter demand. It also represents a return to more typical growth patterns following the accelerated demand for logistics services during the Covid-19 pandemic and the lows of the recent freight recession.
“This suggests a return to traditional patterns of seasonality that we have not seen since pre-COVID,” the researchers wrote in the monthly LMI report, published Tuesday, adding that the buildup is somewhat tempered by increases in warehousing capacity and transportation capacity.
The LMI report is based on a monthly survey of logistics managers from across the country. It tracks industry growth overall and across eight areas: inventory levels and costs; warehousing capacity, utilization, and prices; and transportation capacity, utilization, and prices. The report is released monthly by researchers from Arizona State University, Colorado State University, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rutgers University, and the University of Nevada, Reno, in conjunction with the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP).
That hiring surge marks a significant jump in relation to the company’s nearly 17,000 current employees across North America, adding 21% more workers.
That increase is necessary because U.S. holiday sales in 2023 increased 3.9% year-over-year as consumer spending grew even amidst uncertain economic times and trends like inflation and consumer price sensitivity. Looking at the coming peak, a similar pattern is projected for this year, with shoppers forecasted to drive a 4.8% increase in holiday retail sales for 2024, Geodis said, citing data from Emarketer.
To attract the extra workforce, Geodis says it will offer competitive wages, peak premium pay incentives, peak and referral bonuses, an expedited payment option, and flexible schedules. And it’s using an AI-powered chatbot named Sophie to serve as a virtual recruiting assistant.
“We acknowledge the immense responsibility we have to our customers to deliver exceptional service every day, and this is especially true during peak season,” Anthony Jordan, GEODIS in Americas Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, said in a release. “Because peak season is the most business-critical sales period of the year for many of our retail clients, expanding our workforce is vital to ensure we have a flexible, dynamic team that can handle anticipated surges in demand.”
With the economy slowing but still growing, and inflation down as the Federal Reserve prepares to lower interest rates, the United States appears to have dodged a recession, according to the National Retail Federation (NRF).
“The U.S. economy is clearly not in a recession nor is it likely to head into a recession in the home stretch of 2024,” NRF Chief Economist Jack Kleinhenz said in a release. “Instead, it appears that the economy is on the cusp of nailing a long-awaited soft landing with a simultaneous cooling of growth and inflation.”
Despite an “eventful August” with initial reports of rising unemployment and a slowdown in manufacturing, more recent data has “calmed fears of a deteriorating U.S. economy,” Kleinhenz said. “Concerns are now focused on the direction of the labor market and the possibility of a job market slowdown, but a recession is far less likely.”
That analysis is based on data in the NRF’s Monthly Economic Review, which said annualized gross domestic product growth for the second quarter has been revised upward to 3% from the original report of 2.8%. And consumer spending, the largest component of GDP, was revised up to 2.9% growth for the quarter from 2.3%.
Compared to its recent high point of 9.1% in July of 2022, inflation is nearly back to normal. Year-over-year growth in the Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index – the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation – was at 2.5% in July, unchanged from June and only half a percentage point above the Fed’s target of 2%.
The labor market “is not terribly weak” but “is showing signs of tottering,” Kleinhenz said. Only 114,000 jobs were added in July, lower than expected, and the unemployment rate rose to 4.3% from 4.1% in June. Despite the increase, the unemployment rate is still within the normal range, Kleinhenz said.
“Now the guessing game begins on the magnitude and frequency of rate cuts and how far the federal funds rate will be reduced,” Kleinhenz said. “While lowering interest rates would be good news, it takes time for rate reductions to work their way through the various credit channels and the economy as a whole. Consequently, a reduction is not expected to provide an immediate uplift to the economy but would stabilize current conditions.”
Going forward, Kleinhenz said lower rates should benefit households under pressure from loans used to meet daily needs. Lower rates will also make it more affordable to borrow through mortgages, home improvement loans, car loans, and credit cards, encouraging spending and increasing demand for goods and services. Small businesses would also benefit, since lower intertest rates could lower their financing costs on existing loans or allow them to take out new loans to invest in equipment and plants or to hire more workers.
The global air cargo market’s hot summer of double-digit demand growth continued in August with average spot rates showing their largest year-on-year jump with a 24% increase, according to the latest weekly analysis by Xeneta.
Xeneta cited two reasons to explain the increase. First, Global average air cargo spot rates reached $2.68 per kg in August due to continuing supply and demand imbalance. That came as August's global cargo supply grew at its slowest ratio in 2024 to-date at 2% year-on-year, while global cargo demand continued its double-digit growth, rising +11%.
The second reason for higher rates was an ocean-to-air shift in freight volumes due to Red Sea disruptions and e-commerce demand.
Those factors could soon be amplified as e-commerce shows continued strong growth approaching the hotly anticipated winter peak season. E-commerce and low-value goods exports from China in the first seven months of 2024 increased 30% year-on-year, including shipments to Europe and the US rising 38% and 30% growth respectively, Xeneta said.
“Typically, air cargo market performance in August tends to follow the July trend. But another month of double-digit demand growth and the strongest rate growths of the year means there was definitely no summer slack season in 2024,” Niall van de Wouw, Xeneta’s chief airfreight officer, said in a release.
“Rates we saw bottoming out in late July started picking up again in mid-August. This is too short a period to call a season. This has been a busy summer, and now we’re at the threshold of Q4, it will be interesting to see what will happen and if all the anticipation of a red-hot peak season materializes,” van de Wouw said.
“Unrelenting labor shortages and wage inflation, accompanied by increasing consumer demand, are driving rapid market adoption of autonomous technologies in manufacturing, warehousing, and logistics,” Seegrid CEO and President Joe Pajer said in a release. “This is particularly true in the area of palletized material flows; areas that are addressed by Seegrid’s autonomous tow tractors and lift trucks. This segment of the market is just now ‘coming into its own,’ and Seegrid is a clear leader.”
According to Pajer, Seegrid’s strength in the sector is due to several new technologies it has released in the past six months. They include: Sliding Scale Autonomy, which provides both flexibility and predictability in autonomous navigation and manipulation; Enhanced Pallet and Payload Detection, which enables reliable recognition and manipulation of a broad range of payloads; and the planned launch of its CR1 autonomous lift truck model later this year.
Seegrid’s CR1 unit offers a 15-foot lift height, 4,000-pound load capacity, and a top speed of 5 mph. In comparison, its existing autonomous lift truck model, the RS1, supports six-foot lift height, 3,500 pound capacity, and the same top speed.
The “series D” investment round was funded by existing lead investors Giant Eagle Incorporated and G2 Venture Partners, as well as smaller investments from other existing shareholders.