Costing a Packaging Job: Material, Machine Time and Finishing

Start with the material. For a carton that means the board grade, caliper and the sheet size the layout fits on. For a pouch it means film structure, width and the metres needed. The layout decides how many ups fit on the sheet. Waste starts here.

Add the tooling. Plates or cylinders, cutting dies, embossing blocks and foil stamping dies each carry a cost. Some are paid once and reused for repeat orders, while others belong to the customer, so settle which is which and print that note beside the tooling line. Ambiguity costs money.

Then add process time. Printing, varnishing, laminating, die cutting, creasing, window patching and gluing each take machine hours at a different hourly rate. Each rate belongs to one machine.

Make-ready eats board and time before a single good sheet appears. A six colour job with a registration issue burns far more than a one colour job. Each press and each colour count has its own typical make-ready allowance. Write it down.

Short runs suffer most. A fixed setup spread over a few thousand cartons adds more to each unit than over a few hundred thousand. Quote setup as its own line so the customer sees why a small order costs more per piece. That ends most price haggling.

Keep a table of make-ready waste by press and process. Update it from real jobs, not from the manual.

The estimator works from a plan. The shop floor works from what happens. The two rarely match. Board arrives in a different sheet size. The die cut is slower than rated. The customer approves a proof late and the press sits idle.

Rework hides well. A rejected pallet resorted by hand costs labour that no quote line ever held, and a reprint after a colour dispute does the same.

Without a job cost record, nobody sees the pattern. Each job looks like a one-off, and the same loss repeats on every repeat order.

The job card is the source. Operators log start and stop times per process, good count and waste count. Stores records the reels or sheets issued. Dispatch records what shipped. Nothing else is needed.

A system can then roll these into an actual cost and set it beside the estimate. Doing this on paper is possible but the month-end rush kills it. Entries made at the machine are fresher and more honest.

Machine hour rates need care too. A rate that ignores die changes, idle time and maintenance understates the real cost of the folder-gluer or press.

Review variance on every closed job. One job tells you little. Twenty jobs on the same die cutter tell you whether your rated speed is honest.

Update the rate tables and waste allowances from that review. Estimators then quote from evidence. Start by picking your five most repeated jobs and comparing their last three actuals with their quotes.