News: CPULD's fall 2023 short courses were a success!

Throughout the fall of 2023, the Center for Packaging and Unit Load Design (CPULD) offered two short courses; one in partnership with Lansmont Corp. and the other in partnership with the NWPCA. Both were an intensive 2.5-days of classes that taught techniques to help save money when designing packages and unit loads by considering the interactions between all of the components of the material handling system.

The Advanced Packaging Dynamics (www.unitload.vt.edu/apd) short course was offered in-person, Oct. 3^rd-5^th, 2023. The instructors (Dr. Laszlo Horvath, CPULD Director; Eric Joneson, VP of Technology, Lansmont) informed attendees about the principles of shock, vibration, field data collection practices, and sensor selection. Laboratory simulations were conducted around how to collect field data and how to use the collected information to optimize packaging and eliminate damages. By the end of the course, attendees were able to instrument different transportation modes in order to collect vibration data, instrument decoy packages to collect distribution shock data, collect and analyze the collected data, and set up laboratory simulations to test new designs under the same conditions realized through the data collection processes.

This course had 16 people registered for it. Attendees flew in from all over the U.S. Everyone had great discussions about packaging! Advanced Packaging Dynamics received high grades on the satisfaction survey conducted. Of respondents, 100% felt that the course provided all the knowledge they had come to learn, and said that they would be recommending the course to others in their company and the industry. Participants even felt that 80%-100% of the topics covered would be useful for their day to day work.

We were told “I loved the course and you all did a great job on it!” – “Overall, I thought the course was great. Very well taught, very informative, and very relevant to my organization.” And, another happy participant told us that “Dr. Horvath and Mr. Joneson were extremely professional and knowledgeable. All questions asked were met with thorough answers and explanations.”

The Unit Load Design and Performance (www.unitload.vt.edu/uldp) short course was offered Nov. 7^th-9^th, 2023 to both in person and virtual attendees. The instructors (Dr. Laszlo Horvath, CPULD Director; Dr. Brad Gething, VP NWPCA; and Kristen DeLack, professional engineer, NWPCA) informed attendees how to use the interactions between wood pallets and packages to lower the cost of the unit load and improve the performance. By the end of the course, attendees were able to optimize their pallet designs for different types of packages, redesign the pallet to decrease the compression stress experienced by corrugated boxes, and design large pallets for flexible unit loads.

This course also had 16 people registered for it with people coming from all over the U.S. and Mexico! Unit Load Design and Performance received high grades on the satisfaction survey conducted. Of respondents, 100% felt that the course provided all the knowledge they had come to learn, and said that they would be recommending the course to others in their company and the industry.

We were told “Overall the information was relevant and well presented to the class. All in all, it was great.” – “I thoroughly enjoyed the Unit Load Design and Performance short course, and it has significantly contributed to my professional growth.” And, finally, “Thank you for providing such a valuable course.”

If you are interested in attending these courses in 2024, or learning more about the other short courses that CPULD offers, please visit our continuing education page: https://www.unitload.vt.edu/education/continuing-education.html