The Standardisation of Boxes

In the ever-changing modernised world, everyone is looking to gain an advantage over fellow competitors when it comes to business. In this blog, I will examine how the standardisation of large shipping containers has given those businesses an advantage over rivals, and why rival company's will now follow suit.

The recent acceleration of Globalization has allowed for many people to purchase foreign goods, for instance, the Chinese have become very fond of Scotch Whiskey, obviously, only made in Scotland. So in order for the Chinese to purchase this product, it needs to be transported all the way to Asia, from Europe. But how has the standardisation of shipping containers allowed this to occur so efficiently and quickly? Well, the simple answer is; the containers are standardised. If all the containers are standardised it means the ship, or the train, or the crane that lifts the boxes, can all be standardised, therefore there is little need to have different ships for different containers as all ships and all containers are standardised for the specific requirements, thus reducing costs of companies, and therefore either increasing profits for those companies that have reduced their costs, or reducing the price for consumers, if the business passes on the reduction in cost to the consumer.

But what does this mean to the consumer? Well, as aforementioned, the company may well reduce the price of the good to the consumer and therefore creating savings for the consumer. It also means that the goods are more efficiently transported as no time is wasted on ensuring the correct crane is in the docks at the right time for the correct containers etc. So consumers gain the benefit of having Scotch Whiskey in China all the time, with little chance of supply issues.

So why will rival companies follow suit? In my opinion, this is fairly obvious, it will make them more attractive to those who want their goods exported as it will be more efficient and will also be more economically viable as costs should be reduced through the standardisation.

So, the standardisation of container shipping boxes has resulted in many benefits for the consumer and businesses around the globe and has helped to accelerate Gloablization as those large companies look to exploit all areas of the globe to turn over more and more revenue each year.