Peak season main material arrives on plan, then the line stops at packing: carton supplier on holiday, label plate unchanged, desiccant not replenished. Packaging and auxiliaries often are not counted as "material"—procurement buys like office supplies, planning does not kit-check. Low unit price, high line-stop cost. The forgotten packaging layer most often kills the line.
Anything without which you cannot ship is material. Material needs code, demand, and inventory.
Auxiliaries Enter Kit Check
BOM includes packaging tiers: box, pallet, label, manual, bag, tape quotas. MRP explodes from shipment plan, accounting print lead and MOQ. Peak season locks plates early—mark changes go through change control. Safety stock by lead time—not "looks like plenty left."
- Separate packaging warehouse from finished goods—do not treat cartons as clutter.
- Customer-specific packaging binds to customer and SKU—no mixing.
- Downtime reason codes include "missing auxiliary"—make it visible.
Low Value Does Not Mean Low Risk
The XYN digital intelligence system puts packaging in work-order kit checks—no completion posting without cartons. One fewer peak-season stop pays for a year of "trouble." Treating cartons as office supplies pays tuition in downtime.
Check last week's downtime for missing labels or cartons. If yes, promote those items to main-material management—stop admin procurement.
