Daily Harvest Optimizes Packing with Paccurate

Daily Harvest, the company on a mission to make it easy to eat more sustainably-grown fruits and vegetables, delivers high-quality, easy to prep, sustainably sourced food, directly to customers’ doors. From Smoothies and Harvest Bowls to Grains and Pastas, you can make delicious snacks and meals in minutes. Recently, Daily Harvest faced a significant challenge in their e-commerce fulfillment process. A change in their product set led to a disruption in their pre-existing cartonization algorithm, resulting in substantial transportation cost overages.

Daily Harvest uses a third party logistics (3PL) provider to handle fulfillment from end-to-end. With uniquely shaped SKUs like cups and bowls, they documented specific packing rules to accommodate nesting items together as well as dry ice to keep items cold in transit. These generalized packing rules had to be turned into hard-coded heuristics that were never able to fully reflect the packing behavior intended. This led to consistently suboptimal box recommendations and escalating costs with every change.

Upon identifying the root cause and implementing a fix to halt the initial problem, Daily Harvest realized the necessity for a more robust cartonization approach to handle their growing volume and complexity. They contemplated building an in-house solution but quickly discovered the intricacies of 3D cartonization.

“In our build versus buy analysis it became quickly evident at how complex it was to solve for what on the surface initially felt like it may be relatively straight forward math. Given bandwidth and difficulty in solving for the multiple bin packing optimizations we were looking to tackle, it became clear the Paccurate team had a robust system built and support team in place to help us get our goals across the finish line,” said Wesley Williams, Vice President of Supply Chain.

As part of the pre-sale process, Paccurate’s cartonization API processed historical order data along with the 'Compact Geometry' packing rule, showcasing its feasibility in handling carton, dry ice, and various SKUs scenarios. Analyzing a sample size of 23,857 orders, the API found 20,212 cartons remained the same baseline but improved cartonization for 3,645 cartons using the 'Compacted' rule set, marking an 18% improvement. This optimization translated to a five-figure savings per month.

Download the full case study here.

Sustainably sourced, nourishing food is a priority for Daily Harvest. Optimizing packing efficiency while maintaining the integrity of the food in every box shipped, Paccurate improved Daily Harvest's sustainable supply chain from end-to-end.

“With the support of the Paccurate team, Daily Harvest continues to improve upon the customer experience, reduce operational cost, and lean into our commitment to sustainability,” said Williams.

Daily Harvest uses four box sizes to ship orders. As a next step, PacSimulate will analyze their order history to determine whether the sizes of their existing carton mix are most efficient. PacSimulate can recommend even slight adjustments to the box sizes to ensure Daily Harvest is reducing waste and saving on transportation and materials costs.

“As we look to the future, Paccurate will continue to be a tool and partnership that we leverage in our continuous improvement on the packaging and bin optimization fronts, including trailer utilization to pallet TiHi. Unlocking insights into cost savings opportunities through gained efficiencies,” said Williams.