What does Sonoco offer that third-party logistics companies and
temporary labor providers can’t? The expertise and culture of a company
with more than 300 manufacturing facilities that has excelled at producing innovative packaging for more than 110 years.
No one produces more packaging platforms on a global scale than we do. Offering displays, custom and contract packing, fulfillment and primary package filling is a natural extension of our legacy expertise.
The business strategy we use at Sonoco Service Centers helps some of the world’s best-known consumer product companies delay packaging until a product has been ordered by a retailer. Located near customers’ manufacturing or distribution centers, our service centers eliminate your headaches, reducing unnecessary inventory, eliminating obsolescence and reducing costs. Our expertise in understanding packaging needs and demands supports our ability to offer customers program management, materials purchasing, and warehouse and distribution management.
Case Study 1: Contact Lens Solution
Contact Lens Supply Chain Solution
Few, if any, consumer products are sold in as many variations as the ubiquitous contact lens. Finding the right combination of size, shape and intensity for each patient hinges on the eye care professional's training and experience. Thanks to an innovative supply chain model developed and managed by Sonoco, one leading eye care products manufacturer now helps eye doctors find this “right fit" more efficiently.
Our client initially turned to Sonoco to develop a permanent display unit that could store and organize 2,500-plus unique lens variations to help busy docs save time as they assessed patients and determined prescriptions. During the display development process, the complexity of loading product into displays, and how the process would impact the eye care products company's manufacturing operations, prompted further discussions with Sonoco's supply chain experts. Tapping into our experience in managing mission-critical packaging customization and fulfillment operations, Sonoco created an execution strategy focused on quality, repeatability, traceability and flexibility.
It’s easy to see the many benefits clearly. Our systems and processes have proven to stand up to the rigors of fluctuating demand. Sonoco's innovative, client-customized supply chain solution has dramatically minimized execution complexity, and simplified the broad distribution of contact lenses to eye-care professionals throughout the United States and Canada, as well as to large retailers in North America.
Case Study 2: DC Special Pack
In DC Special Pack Customization
Initially, a manufacturer and marketer of branded consumer foods sought to drive sales growth by expanding the role of its third-party logistics (3PL) vendor to include retail-driven product manipulation. The retail marketplace embraced the company’s additional product customization options, but a gap between its expectations and the competencies of the 3PL soon appeared.
To fully reap the benefits of its regionalized, special pack customization strategy and create a sustainable competitive advantage in the marketplace, the company knew it needed a “perfect fit” packaging services provider. Sonoco stood out for our best-in-class flexibility and responsiveness, built on a foundation of disciplined cost management.
Sonoco had a great deal to offer: 300 manufacturing facilities around the globe; more than 110 years of shop floor production management experience; and, above all, award-winning merchandising display and promotional packaging expertise to help our consumer packaged goods (or CPG) manufacturers delight their retail partners and consumers.
Today, Sonoco provides our CPG client with comprehensive program management, from design through execution, in a dedicated special pack work cell inside the 3PL's distribution center. Driven by the unique needs of our client's retail partners, Sonoco provides a dynamic set of services in a highly scalable, packaged goods customization service center. Among other daily activities, we efficiently build product assortments in Custom Unit Loads (CULs) to support free standing insert (FSI) promotions, as well as assembling and packing product into P-O-P displays for retailer-driven national display events.
Applying Lean Manufacturing techniques developed in our manufacturing plants to our client's "In DC" Special Pack unit enables the essential agility and rapid response needed to take full advantage of all retailer opportunities, regardless of timelines and scope.
The bottom line?
Sonoco is a global manufacturer that thinks like a sales promotion agency to help our clients win at retail.
