Packaging

What to work on

When you start your day, if your manager doesn’t already have things ready for you, you’ll look to the dry-erase board for what you’re going to be working on.

Until we get a digital board, we are using a dry-erase board to list out all the items we need to work on for the day. This board has the total of each item, not specific to one single order. On busy days, there may be 2 dry-erase boards.

We will also keep a file of in-progress orders in a clear, hanging folder near the dry-erase board. This is just for your reference and should be used to help keep track of what is being made and in what order

Remember: backorders have priority by default (smallest invoice number) and the newest orders are last (biggest invoice number) unless otherwise instructed.

Get your supplies first

Start your day by gathering all of the supplies you’re going to need based on the listed products on the board. Having everything you need in the room is important because you can keep working and keep using the same gloves. Remember, if you leave the room you must change your gloves when you return.

Figure out how many batch/expiration stickers you need

You’ll need to figure this out based on the product. Here are some examples:

• 75ct Display Box - 76 stickers (75 for the packs, 1 for the display box)
• 28ct Jug - 29 stickers (28 for the jars, 1 for the jug top)
• 25ct Jug - 26 stickers (25 for the bags, 1 for the jug top)

Some items have display boxes, some don’t. For example: 6 10ct bottles go into a display box but we don’t have display boxes for 20ct or 50ct bottles.

For more information on different products

Either go print them yourself or have someone designated to print everyone’s stickers. This saves a lot of time in the long-run and will help keep everyone working instead of running back and forth to print stickers.

Thermal Printer (batch/expiration stickers)

All products must have a batch/expiration sticker as well as the worker’s colored mark on it. Each time a worker makes a product and places the batch/expiration sticker, they must mark the sticker with their assigned color.

The stickers have 4 parts:

1. The expiration date is always 2 years ahead of the date we receive the tablet shipment.
2. The batch number is the date we receive the tablets, the strength, then the first letter of the flavor.
3. The tablet type (7-OK 9x in this example) goes on the right.
4. The red marker is a worker’s color to indicate that they made and/or checked this product.

Stickers are printed with the thermal label printer, currently located in the manager’s office. We will try to only print as many stickers as we need, and not keep extra. This is due to the sheer number of products we have and the different expiration dates and batches of tablets we receive. It becomes too easy to grab the wrong sticker, making the product incorrectly labeled and could cause a legal headache for the company and the customer.

How to Print exp batch stickers

How to reload the thermal printer

How to fix a jam in the thermal printer

Label your items before filling

If you’re making bottles or jugs, label those items first to help stay organized. For example – the 10ct and 20ct bottles are the exact same bottles. The only difference would be the label. Same with products with multiple strengths; having the bottles labeled will help make sure you’re filling the right bottle with the right tablets.

HOW TO READ Invoices

From the perspective of packaging, use the following image to read the invoice: