PDQ Displays Make Move To Everyday
PDQs allow
the stores to stock shelves quickly, especially during the busy Back-To-School
season. Shipped with an HSC cover, the store personnel simply cut the
tape holding the HSC to the display, slide the HSC off, and then slide
the PDQ display on to the shelf.
Rather than developing blank corrugate displays, Eldon utilized the PDQs as additional billboard space to call attention to the products. Likewise, the sides could have been left blank or used as even larger billboards, but openings were cut in the sides to help bring visibility to the product when placed on an endcap and to also help light to enter the displays to help highlight and illuminate the product.
Nearly every box required its own PDQ due to dimensional differences. For boxes like the Pencil Pocket™, the PDQ not only had to hold the product, but the front opening had to keep the product from falling out without hindering the actual removal of the product when placed between shelves.
While the regular boxes could be neatly stacked on top of each other, the licensed product created even greater challenges. After all, if you can't see the label, then the product looks like any other box. Wrap under labels with the licensor's logos helped to call attention to the product if it was stacked, and the other half of the label contained the UPC, so only one label needed to be applied. By including a small corrugate pad in the PDQ, the product could be stood on end to display the label, and stacked on top of the pad to maximize the quantity of boxes and for best utilization of the shelf space at the stores.
Utilizing PDQs allowed the stores to greatly reduce the amount of time to set a planogram, as well as easing the upkeep. In the end, it became cost justified to transition most of the everyday business into these displays.
Seeing
the need for improvement, and being new to the program and totally
out of my area of expertise, I didn't know better to leave well enough
alone. Laying out boxes in the footprint of a pallet, rather unscientific,
a new layout was developed around this new divider. Rather than several
components, this divider was made up of one component used twice
to form the tray support and product divider, to be used on both
the pallet and half pallet.
Now,
the only components that were specific to the two versions, were
the pallet skirts, a large HSC to cover the half pallet, and for
the full pallet, a large J-shroud (using two) for the sides and a
second pallet skirt used as a cap... the least expensive of all the
corrugate components.
Two
half trays were used side-by-side for the full pallet. With similar
components, larger production runs could be made and larger quantities
could be purchased from the corrugate suppliers, lowering overall
costs. This flexibility also allowed Eldon to bulk build product
and delay building the pallets until later, hoping that most BTS
buyers had finalized the quantity of full pallets versus half pallets.
To
top it off, this design was easier to pack out. Especially since
the line workers only had to know one setup for the corrugate...
typically the hardest and most time consuming part of the process.
With fewer components, less space was needed at the construction
area and less concern for stopping production because of missing
components. Where pallet was built before, now two pallets and a
half pallet could all be constructed simultaneously.
I
created an assembly layout for the production floor. 
The
pallet label I created to draw more attention to the pallet at store
level.
Early
version allowed good visibility of product from front and sides,
but didn't provide enough side wall to hold boxes in if bumped.
Final
version provided a good compromise between securing the product
and also allowing good visibility. 
Same
cutting die, but different layout using corrugate slip to allow
lower boxes to stand up right to show labels.
