Packing & Crating Delivery System
Last updated: April 2026
A small manufacturer of specialty packing crates for automotive parts was supplying more than 5 Fortune 500 clients with fewer than 10 employees. Managing material costs, labor estimates, cut sheets, scrap utilization, scheduling, and delivery across that volume without a proper system was costing the company money it could not see. PCG built the full packing and delivery system in Microsoft Access with VBA, coding proprietary formulas for crate optimization and material cost calculations directly into the interface. The result was a 20% increase in profitability and a greater than 75% reduction in material waste.
Project requirements
Cut sheets for crate builds. Packing materials inventory. Labor and manhour estimator. Billable cost factor for profit analysis. Track cost and quantity of parts shipped. Exact material costs per crate. Crate optimization for part shipment quantity. Accounts receivable and payable. Inventory management. Scrap wood utilization. Transport scheduling. Multiple site database connections. Minimal-skill employee interface.
Languages and database
Microsoft Access, Visual Basic for Applications (VBA).
Company size
Under 10 employees. Over 5 Fortune 500 clients.
Industry
Manufacturing / automotive parts supply.
❓ What problem did this project solve?
A company with fewer than 10 employees was building specialty crates for automotive parts and shipping to more than 5 Fortune 500 clients. At that scale, every material decision has a direct margin impact. Cutting sheet goods and lumber to the wrong dimensions wastes material that cannot be recovered. Underestimating labor time on a crate build means billing below cost. Without a system that applied consistent pricing formulas and tracked materials precisely, the company was absorbing losses it could not quantify.
The scheduling complexity made it worse. Crates were coming in from part manufacturers, being built to size, and going out to auto assembly plants on tight timelines. The incoming raw materials and the outgoing finished crates had to be coordinated across multiple sites, and the staff operating the system had minimal computer skills. An interface that required training or technical knowledge was not an option. The system had to be operable by people whose expertise was crates, not software.
🛠️ What PCG built
PCG built the complete packing and delivery system in Microsoft Access with VBA, embedding the company's proprietary pricing and optimization formulas directly into the interface. The cut sheet generation calculated optimal lumber and sheet goods dimensions for each crate size, incorporating scrap utilization logic that found use for offcuts rather than discarding them. That single component drove the majority of the 75% waste reduction.
The labor and manhour estimator applied the company's specific labor cost factors, including wage adjustment variables, so that every crate quote reflected current costs rather than outdated estimates. Billable cost calculations built profitability targets into each job before it was accepted. The accounts receivable and payable module tied the financial side to the production tracking so that payment status and delivery status were visible together.
Barcode readers were integrated for data entry at the shop floor level, allowing staff with minimal computer skills to record receipts and shipments without navigating complex forms. Database security roles separated the dirty shop floor environment from the clean office environment, and multiple site connections kept all locations synchronized. The 20% profitability increase came from a combination of accurate job costing, reduced material waste, and the elimination of the manual reconciliation that had been absorbing staff time between jobs.
🔍 Technology used
Running a manufacturing or production operation where job costing, material waste, or scheduling are eating into margins you cannot fully account for?
PCG starts every project with a diagnostic that scopes the work before any development begins.
Talk to PCG
PCG founded 1995. All project details drawn from PCG's internal documentation. Client identity withheld at client request.
Frequently Asked Questions
Without a system, workers default to safe overcutting on every build. Sheet goods and lumber get cut to dimensions that work but waste whatever is left over. PCG embedded the client's proprietary crate optimization formulas directly into the system interface, so the calculation happened automatically at the point of job entry. The system also included scrap wood utilization logic that matched offcuts from one build to the requirements of another rather than discarding them. That combination drove the greater than 75% reduction in material waste on this project. For a shop building specialty automotive crates, material cost is the largest variable expense per job. Getting it right on every build, not just when someone remembered to run the math manually, was the difference.
Yes, if the system is built correctly for that environment. The client on this project had fewer than 10 employees and no dedicated IT staff. PCG built the interface around the physical workflow of the shop floor, not around database architecture. Barcode readers handled data entry for receipts and shipments, so employees did not need to navigate complex forms. Security roles separated the shop floor environment from the office environment. Multi-site database connections synchronized all locations without requiring anyone to manually reconcile records between sites. The system ran on Microsoft Access with VBA, which was the appropriate platform for the scale and the skill level of the staff operating it.
The system PCG built combined exact material costs per crate, a labor and manhour estimator with wage adjustment variables, and a billable cost factor for profit analysis. Every quote reflected current material costs and current labor rates, not last month's numbers. The accounts receivable and payable module tied the financial side to the production tracking, so payment status and delivery status were visible in the same place. Before the system, the company had no reliable way to know whether a job was profitable until after it was complete. The 20% profitability increase came from accurate job costing applied consistently to every build, not from cutting corners or raising prices.
Access handles the workload well for small manufacturing operations up to the point where concurrent users, data volume, or integration requirements exceed what the platform supports. When that happens, the migration path is to SQL Server or a modern .NET application while preserving the business logic, the pricing formulas, and the operational data that the original system captured. PCG has done both: building production and delivery systems in Access when it is the right tool, and migrating those systems to modern platforms when the business has grown past it. The key is that the migration preserves the formulas and logic that actually run the operation, not just the data. Contact PCG to discuss where your current system stands.
Yes. The packing and delivery system PCG built for this client tracked incoming parts from automotive manufacturers, coordinated crate builds to size, and managed outbound delivery schedules to assembly plants across multiple sites. The transport scheduling module tied delivery commitments to production status so that a crate that was not built yet could not be scheduled for a delivery it could not make. Multi-site database connections kept all locations looking at the same data. For a company supplying more than 5 Fortune 500 clients from a shop with fewer than 10 people, that coordination was not optional. A missed delivery to an automotive assembly plant is a significant financial and relationship event. The system made on-time delivery a default, not a result of someone manually tracking every order.