Ranpak had already made a considerable investment working with an equipment designer in Europe. Unfortunately, the resulting prototype was not satisfactory, so the company approached MAGNET PDD for a consultation.

“They wanted to be able to estimate the empty volume to within 10%,” recalls Ed Nolan, Vice President, PDD Senior Vice President. “The European design depended on a scanner that couldn’t come close to that accuracy. So the first thing we had to tell them was that we ought to start from scratch. We suggested we start over by evaluating all the different kinds of scanners that might be able to do the job right.”

After a thorough evaluation of various scanner technologies, the PDD team identified an optical laser scanner intended for the robotics industry that could create a 3-D map of a void space accurate to within an eighth of an inch. The team demonstrated that this technology could be adapted to Ranpack’s application and function at the required accuracy. Ranpak’s technology developers accepted the PDD team’s advice and the project shifted focus to a different technology.

“It was hard to tell them that they had to start over,” says Nolan. “But at the end of the day, they respected us for holding our ground. They were able to leapfrog their competition with this technology—nobody else has this. That’s our job.”