{"id":12233,"date":"2012-08-22T03:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-08-22T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/?p=12233"},"modified":"2012-08-22T03:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-08-22T08:00:00","slug":"give-me-a-pallet-and-i-can-move-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/12233","title":{"rendered":"Give Me a Pallet and I Can Move the World"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/articles\/business\/transport\/2012\/08\/pallets_the_single_most_important_object_in_the_global_economy_.single.html\">The Single Most Important Object in the Global Economy<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Companies like Ikea have literally designed products around pallets: Its \u201cBang\u201d mug, notes Colin White in his book Strategic Management, has had three redesigns, each done not for aesthetics but to ensure that more mugs would fit on a pallet (not to mention in a customer\u2019s cupboard). After the changes, it was possible to fit 2,204 mugs on a pallet, rather than the original 864, which created a 60 percent reduction in shipping costs. There is a whole science of \u201cpallet cube optimization,\u201d a kind of Tetris for packaging; and an associated engineering, filled with analyses of \u201cpallet overhang\u201d (stacking cartons so they hang over the edge of the pallet, resulting in losses of carton strength) and efforts to reduce \u201cpallet gaps\u201d (too much spacing between deckboards). The \u201cpallet loading problem,\u201d\u2014or the question of how to fit the most boxes onto a single pallet\u2014is a common operations research thought exercise.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Single Most Important Object in the Global Economy Companies like Ikea have literally designed products around pallets: Its \u201cBang\u201d mug, notes Colin White in his book Strategic Management, has had three redesigns, each done not for aesthetics but to &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/12233\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-math"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12233\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}