The report identifies an empty smooth carton. Several of ours have tape overlaps near the proposed cup area, with printed and rougher board elsewhere. We have retained filled examples from the planned supply.

Send those identified examples with their contact regions recorded, and agree the handling and release evidence you need before the next trial. Include unsuccessful conditions. A summary of successful lifts could otherwise leave you unable to tell which surfaces were quietly avoided.

Keep the twenty-carton order size beside preparation and changeover work. Sample holding results will not supply the labour comparison for a short batch.

I'd want to see how the next carton gets under the cups too. It is easy to watch one lovely pickup and miss somebody turning every awkward box into the lovely one before the camera starts.

Supplier proposes rotating individual cartons to keep tape away from the cups. That is now an explicit preparation requirement, not something we already do. Packaging is reviewing it against the transfer job.

Does the proposal address printed and rough board as well, or only the tape overlap? Avoiding one surface feature would not establish the others.

And would that rotation preserve the orientation needed at the destination? I do not know your packing workflow, but an extra turn at each end would belong to the method being compared.

Then do not price the current offer as an unchanged packing workflow. The orientation requirement is part of the job, not a preference to delete because the vacuum tool dislikes it.

Could the tool supplier offer a different cup arrangement for the required orientation, or is the present tool the only proposal? I'd rather know that before arguing about who gets the carton-turning duty.

Any alternative would need the same complete filled-carton assessment, including release and the contact conditions it permits. A moved cup on a sketch is a candidate, not an inherited pass.

They have proposed a revised layout that avoids the usual seam region with our label orientation unchanged. The tool designer has defined the permitted carton and contact variation. A new supervised sample assessment is using that complete arrangement.

Who determines whether an incoming carton falls outside that permitted variation? It matters whether the condition is already controlled by packaging or adds another individual inspection to this job.

Packaging controls the defined carton supply and orientation already; damaged or out-of-condition cartons follow its existing separate route. The revised tool passed the agreed filled-sample hold, transfer and release checks across the defined surfaces, without the extra hand rotation.

That removes a specific extra task. Has the short-order comparison included actual tool setup and changeover time, not only the transfer cycle?

Those times are now included and the twenty-carton comparison remains favourable. We've selected the revised concept for the next integration stage, not claimed every future carton is covered; packaging's permitted conditions and the installed assessment remain explicit requirements.

Useful outcome. The alternative earned its place by doing the actual orientation job, not by giving the packing operator a new invisible task. Keep that exact tool arrangement with the next-stage brief.