The recipe for Snyder's long history of success is not only in the pretzels, but also in the way it runs its two manufacturing facilities. The company's Hanover, PA, and Good Year, AZ, sites are both automated and efficient. In fact, the Hanover, PA plant began automation in 1948 and went on to become one of the first snack food plants to be fully automated.

After nearly 100 years of sustained growth, the company recently faced a new challenge. Increasing fuel and natural gas prices significantly raised transportation, operations and raw material costs. Snyder's looked carefully at its operations for ways to help offset these growing manufacturing expenses, as well as to address a growing desire to operate in a more sustainable way. To help it evaluate its operations, Snyder's brought in long-time partner Georgia-Pacific. The companies have worked together for approximately nine years.

“We have always worked hard to improve the efficiency of our operations, but felt it was time to bring in additional expertise,” says Chuck Stroda, director of purchasing for Snyder's of Hanover. “Georgia-Pacific's Packaging Systems Optimization (PSO™) team provided an additional high level of operations, package design and engineering experience to help us reach the high-hanging fruit.”

Snyder's PSO began with an in-depth, day-long site evaluation of Snyder's 10 highest-volume packaging specifications at its Hanover facility by GP packaging engineers. The team then returned to GP's Innovation Institute to analyze what was learned. The Innovation Institute was created by GP to provide a creative, collaborative environment that helps the company's engineers identify and reduce supply chain costs, increase shelf velocity and deliver innovative and sustainable solutions quickly.

Over a three-week period, the PSO team examined the information collected during the site evaluation. The results were compiled in a formal PSO report, which includes detailed information on sustainability and the steps to improve overall operational efficiency and their potential cost savings. The team found significant efficiency, cost, packaging material and energy savings opportunities with several packaging specifications, as well as in transportation and unitizing of raw materials.

During the visit, the PSO team noted that the tray for one of Snyder's newer products—Snyder's Pretzel Sandwiches—could be redesigned with less material for easier stacking.

The snack is packaged in bags, which then are placed on a corrugated tray and stacked in a large box for shipping. The original tray design is a full roll-end, where the end flaps fold completely over and lock at the bottom of the tray.

The PSO team proposed a new design where the flaps fold over and lock in place half way up the side of tray. The new design reduced the overall knockdown size, fiber content and cost without changing the inside dimensions of the tray.

“We didn't realize what a difference a small redesign of the tray would make,” says Stroda. “But that minor design change could save us more than $42,000 a year, and we feel good about reducing overall fiber usage in our shipments.”

Overall, the redesigns and packaging optimizations resulting from the PSO are estimated to have saved Snyder's more than 350 tons of fiber and nearly 971 tons of greenhouse gas reductions.

High-impact box optimizations

Through identifying alternative packaging materials to actual box requirements encountered in Snyder's supply chain, the companies redefined box compression requirements for eight of the 10 packaging specifications. Additionally, GP developed more cost-effective designs for six of the 10 specifications, which also resulted in cost savings.