Name: Truck Tetris: Optimizing Packaging for Transportation Efficiency
Start: 2024-05-17T11:00:00-0400
End: 2024-05-17T11:30:00-0400

Welcome to the MIT SCM Research Symposium 2024 and thank you for joining us! We hope you find the day exciting and informative. To enhance your experience, we are utilizing this platform in order to help identify projects of top interest to you. Below you will find not only the schedule, but also the abstracts and attached executive summaries of each project. Additionally, you can better acquaint yourself with the student presenters and advisors through their profiles. Thank you again and we look forward to hosting you.

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Truck Tetris: Optimizing Packaging for Transportation Efficiency

Consumer demand for frozen products from The J.M. Smucker Company has grown dramatically over recent years, driving an evident need to increase total ship output. The overarching problem that we attempted to solve in this project was how to maximize the amount of a specific frozen product loaded onto trailers in order to increase total ship output by changing carton, case, and pallet packaging dimensions and orientations without increasing the total number of trailers used. Empirical research was performed and through TOPS optimization modeling techniques, we modified carton, case, and pallet dimensions for 4-count, 10-count, and 18-count products. Informational interviews and a facility visit were performed to identify and further explore stakeholder objectives and success criteria. Upon conclusion, we provided a series of recommendations to maximize Smucker’s shipping output per trailer for the given product to reduce their transportation costs while meeting all of the requirements outlined by the identified stakeholders.

Student Presenters