When Pioneer looked to logistics provider, DSC Logistics, for a solution, they had confidence in our ability to keep their costs low. By consolidating steps and eliminating transportation to and from another provider, DSC enabled Pioneer to reduce inventory, improve service and lower costs.

Pioneer asked DSC to take over packaging the individual retail boxes for the DVD writer product line for which we were already handling distribution. With Pioneer, we devised a solution that keeps the entire packaging cycle under one roof, from initial product inbound to component inventory to the physical packout and eventual shipment of the finished goods. Having us perform the packaging enables Pioneer to reduce transportation costs as well as turn time on the product. Plus, they get tighter inventory controls on the components (manuals, software, screws, etc.)

The computer drives are shipped to the U.S. in bulk packs of 10. Before the drives are shipped out to retail stores and wholesale distributors, they’re packaged into individual retail boxes along with installation guides, warranties, software and mounting screws. The retail boxes are then placed into master cartons containing 2-5 pieces of the retail box; each master carton has a label on the face that displays the serial numbers of the product in that carton. Pioneer was using a separate company to perform this packout, but the drives always came to DSC first. So, we were receiving the bulk drives and shipping them to the packager who was then shipping us the retail/wholesale units back.

There had to be a better solution, and we found it. The first challenge we faced was sourcing the components. Pioneer requested that we find vendors to provide the printed materials, screws and boxes to be used in production. The sourcing solution, developed through the combined effort of local DSC management and the corporate start-up group, enabled us to put together pricing that made us a competitive solution to Pioneer’s existing provider. With some programming help from Engineering & IT, a process was developed that combined an existing serial printing program and a packaging Quality Control program.

It’s a great example of DSC’s flexibility. We took a packaging operation different from anything else we were performing and developed a working solution. We’re always ready to create or combine capabilities, customize quickly and deploy resources, wherever and whenever they’re needed….in fact, we’re ready for anything!