When a shipment arrives damaged, most manufacturers calculate the obvious costs: product replacement, return shipping, and any freight expenses they can't recover. But those expenses often represent only a fraction of the financial impact. Production [...]

Most supplier evaluations only see the first year, and the first year is built to look better than every year after it. Here's why, plus the five structural signals that predict whether an industrial packaging supplier relationship actually holds up once the RFP and onboarding are behind you.

Most RFPs test whether a supplier can build to spec. They don't test whether packaging performs as an operational system once it's running, touching quality, inventory, labor, and transportation long after the contract is signed. Here's what a packaging audit catches that the RFP never does.