DALE'S SECOND LAW:
EVERY PACKAGING OPERATION REQUIRES AN
EQUAL AND OPPOSITE UNPACKAGING OPERATION.

               The force of this law extends from consumer packaging right through industrial containers and 
               into shipping and natural resource handling.  It governs use and waste of both materials and labor, 
               thus affecting lean manufacturing efforts.   From there, it goes on into waste disposal and environ-
               mental conservation.  A few examples and corollaries follow.

1.    When you received those CDs for Christmas, how long did it take you to get them out of 
  their armored packaging?

2.    If it took a huge industrial machine to package an item, unpackaging it will likely require an 
  industrial solution, too.

3.    In any manufacturing operation, an internal packaging operation will result in wasted labor 
  and materials, both when the WIP is packaged, and as it is removed from that packaging.

4.    Corollary 3 is only partially circumvented by using recyclable packaging:  transporting 
  empty bins back to the point of origin and then cleaning them is still non-value-added activity.

5.   Some loss (damage, spillage, shrinkage, contamination) always occurs during both the
 packaging and unpackaging operations.  One needs to include both of these losses in
 efficiency calculations.