Standard Cases and Pallets
The modern-day transportation industry has benefited in great deal from the standardization of containers and pallets. Both elements assure the pallet loader that if the products fit in a standard pallet size, then they can be shipped anywhere in a container and stored in any plant.
Hence the premise of Quick Pallet Maker. Our intention is to make it fast and easy for you to fit your products onto a pallet and/or container and design the cases accordingly. The standard pallet and case window contains the reusable data for this purpose.
Standard Boxes
A company may use standard case sizes when working with off-the-shelf (i.e. in stock) boxes or when the logistics guidelines for the company suggest that items should be packed in a limited number of box sizes. The latter is usually accomplished by allowing some slack into them.
The advantages of using a limited number of boxes (among others) are the following:
Quick Pallet Maker provides the user with two lists of standard boxes; one in inches (Imperial units) and the other list in millimeters (metric). The latter can be used for centimeters by multiplying the dimensions by 10 and entering them in the table. When the user works with metric units, the standard cases will be picked from the mm list and when the user works with English units, the standard cases will be picked from the inches list.
All cases can be enabled or disabled by checking or unchecking the checkbox in the first column of the dimensions list. Disabled boxes will be ignored during all calculations, including box fill. Changing the box type will also allow for discrimination when calculating. Clicking twice on the case dimensions will allow them to be edited. Quitting the application will save them automatically into the "stdenboxes.xml" (for English unit boxes) and in the "stdisoboxes.xml" files which are located in the "QPM Folder" that holds all the user preferences.
Standard metric unit cases allow for standardization of the length and width only or for all three dimensions. If you wish to use only standard lengths and widths (leaving any height value), assign a case height value of zero to the listed box. If the standard case height is greater than zero, then QPM will assume that the user wishes to define an exact box (length x width x height).
The box drawings next to the tables update when the selected box changes. If the box is missing a dimension, nothing will be shown. Clicking on the drawing with the right button on a Windows PC or Ctrl+click on a Mac will open a menu that allows the user to pick from the open or closed box views.
The menus on top of each box table allow the user to select whether the dimensions in the table will be used as internal or external standard case dimensions.
Quick Pallet Maker includes the option of adding a maximum compression strength per standard box. Once this strength has been added, QPM will calculate pallet loads that do not stress the lower boxes more than the allowed value. This makes perfect sense when working with readily available boxes.
Standard Pallets
Most companies will not use more than a small set of pallets to ship their products. Quick Pallet Maker provides a list of four commonly-used pallet sizes that can be modified or expanded to include different pallets.
To add a new pallet, select one of the available rows and choose "Duplicate" from the Edit menu. A new pallet should appear. Double-click on any of the items in the pallet row, including the pallet name to change them. The drawing below will update to reflect the new pallet. If you wish to make the new pallet the default pallet, select it in the pull-down menu that appears above the table.
Standard Containers
Quick Pallet Maker has added the possibility of working with standard shipping containers and storing their properties in the second tab of the Standard Cases and Pallets window. The container table also includes a column in which the user can assign the maximum load weight that can be loaded into the container.
Adding or editing a container is similar to the standard cases and pallets tables.