The packaging and the shipping plan are parts of the product design and are as much the responsibility of the designer as are the working parts of the product. You should design the product to be adapted to shipping, and you should consider packaging and shipping to be unwritten parts of the specification. (Some customers, including the military, make them very much a written part of the specification.)
Appearance
The appearance of a consumer product package may be an important sales tool. The product itself may be displayed through a transparent window in the package. Such packaging is a job for an expert. Unless you have become one, you should call on your own company's packaging department, if it has one, or on one or more packaging vendors as soon as your product's size has been established. If you use an industrial designer (artistic), he or she should be authorized to work on both product and package as an artistic whole.
Protection
The first requirement of packaging is that it protects the product from damage during unsympathetic handling from your factory to the end user. Such handling includes dropping from truck to ground, usually on a corner, rain, cold and heat (including standing in the hot sun), shock and vibration in trucks and freight cars, low pressure on airplanes, salt spray on ships, dust, impact from other packages, electromagnetic radiation including x-ray examination, and careless unpacking by the end user or its receiving department.
Among the techniques used to protect the products are partial disassemblies and separate packaging or sub-packaging of the parts, cushioning with corrugated cardboard or cut or molded foam cushions, plastic film bags, silica gel packets enclosed to absorb moisture, coating corrodible or polished surfaces with greases or peel-able plastic films, corrosion-protecting bag materials, and blocking or clamping of flexible structures. You should consider what the customer should do if the product may have to be repacked for further shipment or return.
Naked Shipment
A valuable technique to avoid the cost of packaging protection is naked shipment, calling on the upbringing of all but the crudest brutes to make them care for the product. During World War II there was much breakage of radar display tubes. Finally they were shipped naked, suspended in flimsy openwork orange crates. Everyone has been brought up not to drop glass.
For large products there has been developed the air-ride van, similar to a standard furniture moving van. The product is loaded at the factory, unpackaged, with straps and cushioning quilts, by the factory's own people working with the driver. The driver has been selected and trained by the moving van company to handle sensitive and expensive products. The same driver picks up the product, drives it all the way without transshipment, and delivers it to the end user. Most of the large moving companies provide this service. The cost per ton-mile is high, but the cost for crating and uncrating is almost zero and damage risk is almost zero.
Sterile Packaging
For certain medical products and, of course, for certain food products, the package must be capable of being sterilized by either heat or gas. Experiments have been made with x-ray and nuclear radiation for sterilizing after packaging.
Documentation
A most important part of customer documentation is unpacking instructions. Remember that customers can be most obtuse about understanding a written instruction that they have never seen before and must obey accurately. Many customers follow the rule: "When all else fails, read the instructions." Therefore you should visualize a customer tinkering with assembly. Design the product so that the customer will do the least harm.
Packaging Vendors
There is a large industry of custom package companies. They will design and provide cushions, cartons, boxes, pallets, and crates to shift your product. Treat them as you would any special-component vendor. There is another industry of custom packaging companies. They will pack, crate, and mark your product to meet a variety of specifications including military, customs, and those of other countries.
