HiLe collaborates with medical industry player to reduce their packaging costs by 67%

Summary

The client approached HiLe with two major asks – to reduce the cost of their packaging and make it more sustainable. HiLe helped replace their wooden crates with eco-friendly corrugated board, significantly bringing down their expenses.

The context  

The client is the first surgical robotics venture to emerge from Singapore’s academic and clinical ecosystem. Incorporated as a company in 2007, they are now leading innovators in robotic prostate biopsy and treatment solutions.

Together with urologists, the client has played a critical role in over 23,000 across the globe – and they continue to help address the need for a precision percutaneous approach to transperineal procedures .

The challenge 

The client was using crates to ship its specialized medical product. This proved both costly and unsustainable, since the packaging was discarded after every use. Each time a product was shipped, it impacted their margins negatively.

The timeline was tight, and the requirement was for a one-time-use, optimized packaging solution that would also be eco-friendly.

Unsustainable | Expensive

The HiLe solution 

With the two major concerns – of cost and sustainability – in mind, we took a multi-pronged approach to the client’s ask, which included:

Detailed discussions prior to implementing design changes. These changes took into account the critical and sensitive parts of both the product and its packaging. We also ensured the packaging was simple enough to be handled by one person.

Using 3D CAD software to develop the new packaging, which meant that any design iterations could be executed quickly and seamlessly.

Converting the wooden crate into a corrugated solution. Aside from the pallet that was still made of wood, the rest of the packaging parts were replaced by 100% corrugated board.

The impact

Our intervention resulted in tremendous cost-savings for the client. Initially, the crate costs were USD 623 per set. The new solution with the corrugated board amounts to only USD 203 per set, resulting in approximately 67% in savings! The new packaging solution is also much more eco-friendly, and has helped the client meet its sustainability goals.

67% cost savings | Eco-friendly packaging | No increase in manpower