Smart Packing Material Preferences User Guide

Smart Packing Material Preferences can help shippers that have specific packing requirements related to certain SKUs, Product Categories, and material types.

This guide is can help you get the most benefit out of Smart Packing Material Preferences.

Material Preferences expand the number of scenarios where Smart Packing can automate decision-making during your packing process. They are another tool that, when used with Shipping Policies and Packing Rules (also called Teach Mode), will increase the accuracy of ShipHawk for your business.

When configured correctly, Material Preferences will direct Smart Packing to pack more accurately for your specific business needs.

Overview

There are two types of Material Preferences.

Why two types of Material Preferences? This design offers the most flexibility to get the required packing behavior for each use case. Shippers can restrict what items can be packing into a given box. Others may have use cases where they want to force certain item into specific container(s). This design accommodates both options. Select the one that works best for your use case. Sometimes both preference types will be needed.

The two types of material preferences are the PRODUCT type and the MATERIAL type.

PRODUCT type: Use PRODUCT preferences to force (or prevent) SKUs or products within a Product Category or Subcategory to be packed in specific packing materials or containers.
- Force Packing Examples:
  - Example #1: Glass bottles must be packed only in boxes that have inserts that keep the bottle upright and have dividers to prevent damage when shipping multiple bottles.
  - Example #2: Heavy items must be packed in reinforced boxes that are designed for shipping those items.
  - Example #3: Hazmat items must be packed in boxes that include pre-printed Hazmat markings.
- Prevent Packing Examples
- “Packs Individually”. PRODUCT preferences have an optional “Packs Individually” flag which will always pack that item alone into the specific material. Each item will be packed in its own container.
MATERIAL type: Use MATERIAL preferences to define what items or categories of products may be specific packing materials or containers. These will only restrict which materials can be packing into that container. To force an item, use a Product preference.
- Example #1: Boxes with dividers that are specifically designed for glass bottles should not be selected for non-bottle items.
- Example #2: Reinforced boxes should only be used with heavy items.
  - Note: In both examples #1 and #2, both a PRODUCT and MATERIAL preference may be required to get preferred packing. One rule to always pack the heavy item in a reinforced box and a second rule to restrict reinforced box to be used only when heavy items are being shipped.
- Example #3: Hazmat-marked containers should only be used when hazmat items are being shipped.
  - Note: In the hazmat example, the shipper may be OK to ship the hazmat items in any container given they can add hazmat labeling, but they only want to use special hazmat marked boxes when hazmat items are present. Only a MATERIAL preference is required in this scenario.
- “Allow other items”. MATERIAL preferences have a setting that allows other items to be packed in a container once that container has been selected.
  - Allow other items = TRUE allows other items to be packed in the container as long as one allowed item is present.
    - Example: Use a hazmat-marked box only when at least one hazmat item is shipping but it is OK to pack other, non-hazmat items in that same box.
  - Allow other items = FALSE means that only the specific items can be packed in the restricted container. All other items will be packed separately.
    - Example: Use a bottle box only for bottle. Pack all other items, e.g. a hammer, into a separate box.
- Only one MATERIAL rule is permitted per material. This avoids potential conflicts.
  - Example: User creates a MATERIAL rule for a given 8x8x8 box to only be used with “Shirts” and another preference that the same 8x8x8 box should only be used with “Hats”.

Best Practices for Material Preferences:

Material Preferences are an important tool for improving the accuracy of Smart Packing in certain situations. Even with this feature, however, there are some use cases that will not be packed exactly the way that shippers expect or want. The goal of Smart Packing is to automate as many scenarios as possible to free the shipper to manually pack the fewest number of exceptions. See Smart Packing 101 for setting expectations related to Smart Packing accuracy and how to communicate the benefits with users.

The following are some recommendations when using Material Preferences:

Use as few Material Preferences as possible. Preferences add calculation time during the packing process and can slow automation and rate response times. It can also make it more difficult to answer the question: “why was my order packed in this way?”
Only use Material Preferences when required. No need to allow all materials for a given item or to allow all items to be packed in a given container.
Check first whether Product/SKU settings can inform packing before creating a Material Preference. Use the Product setting where possible. Consider the following settings:
1. “Ships Individually”. If an item should always ship alone regardless of packaging, use Ships Individually from Product page.
2. “Do not Palletize”. Use the Product setting to restrict an item from being packed on all pallets. Use a Material Preference to restrict an item only to certain containers.
3. “OK to pack in Envelope”. Use this Advanced Packing Setting to restrict item from being packed in Envelope.
4. “Put item on a pallet”. Use this Advanced Packing Setting to force an items onto a pallet if there are no restrictions about which pallet is OK to use. Use Material Preferences to force the use of a specific pallet.
Material Preferences can conflict with Product/SKU settings and with each other. If there are conflicts, Smart Packing may not be able to pack your order. Potential conflict use cases:
1. MATERIAL rule take precedent over PRODUCT rule.
  1. Example:
    1. User has a PRODUCT rule that all Shirts must pack in 8x8x8 box.
    2. User has a MATERIAL rule that 8x8x8 box should only be used for Hats.
    3. Result: Box 8x8x8 will only be used for Hats. Smart Packing will not be able to pack an order containing Shirts.
2. PRODUCT preferences that allow given item to be packed in a certain material will be complemenary.
  1. Example:
    1. User has a PRODUCT preference that SKU_1 packs only in Box_A.
    2. User has a PRODUCT preference that SKU_1 packs only in Box_B.
    3. Result: SKU_1 can pack in Box_A or Box_B.
Material Preferences can apply to both Parcel and LTL shipments depending on the material. Preferences containing pallets for Loose items will only be applied if the item setting and the materials can include envelopes, boxes, or pallets. Material
Shipping Policies take precedence over Smart Packing with Material Preferences.
Packing Rules will take precedence over Smart Packing with Material Preferences.
1. Example: If a packing rule has been created to pack 3 specific bottles into a large box, Smart Packing will not pack into a bottle box.
Certain combinations of preferences can result in packing material never being used.
1. Example:
  1. User has a MATERIAL preference that Box_A is only used with SKU_1
  2. User has a PRODUCT preference that SKU_1 is only packed in Box_B
  3. Result: Box_A is never selected by Smart Packing.
PRODUCT preferences where “pack only in” and “do not pack in” are set for the same material.
1. Example:
  1. User has a PRODUCT preference that SKU_1 is only packed in Box_A
  2. User has a PRODUCT preference that SKU_1 is not packed in Box_A
  3. Result: SKU_1 will pack in Box_A.
There are some cases where Material Preferences will not be able to optimize. Smart Packing is still a sequential algorithm that tries to minimize number of packages and empty space in those packages. There are times when material preferences may conflict with the goal of minimizing the number and size of packages and the result may not match the ideal packing configuration for a particular shipper. These use cases must be adjusted manually or, in some cases, Packing Rules may help automate recurring scenarios.

IMPORTANT: Each Packing Container may only be associated with one MATERIAL TYPE preference. This avoids potential conflicts where the same item or category(-ies) are both included and excluded.

Instructions

Enable and Use Material Preferences as set up preferences

Enabling Smart Packing Material Preferences for User Account
1. In aadmin, go to Account page and select Edit Account
2. In the Smart Packing section of the Account page, enable “Allow Material Preferences”
3. Once enabled for the account, users can access Material Preferences by clicking on the ->Settings page in the top right of the UI. The Material Preferences are listed with other Smart Packing settings.
Create a new Material Preference:
1. From the Material Preference page, select +ADD NEW PREFERENCE button
2. Enter Material Preference name in “Name” field
3. “Select Products” or “Select Packing Materials” based on the preference type
4. For Products:
  1. APPLICATIONS
    1. Select “SKU(s)”, “Product Category”, or “Product Subcategory” from first dropdown
    2. Selects “is”, “starts with”, or “contains” in the second dropdown
    3. Enter one or more values into “Add SKU/Category” field
  2. ACTIONS
    1. Select “Pack only in” or “Do NOT pack in” from dropdown
    2. Enter one or more materials in “Add Packing Material” box. Dropdown showing all packing material options will appear as seen below.
ADD DETAIL FOR “SELECT PACKING MATERIAL”

ShipHawk Guide

Smart Packing Material Preferences User Guide

Overview

Best Practices for Material Preferences:

Instructions

Related articles

Filter by label