A customer's box request, read into a spec sheet your converter can quote.

The request rarely arrives as a spec. It is an email that says twelve by ten by eight, a bit stronger than the last ones, one color logo on two sides, about 2,500. Or a sample in the mail with a stamp on the bottom, or a plant's RFQ with an old item number. Your rep works out the style, the size and which way it opens, the flute and the board grade, the print and the quantity, and phones the plant about what is still unknown. Only then does a sheet go to the converter.

In the test, AI reads copies of those same requests and drafts each specification sheet: box style code, inside dimensions, flute, board grade by edge crush or burst test, print colors, quantity, and a short list of what a person has to ask the customer before it goes out. Nothing is sent. Your reviewer lines each draft up against the sheet your team actually built.

A box with a lid is not one thing. In the style list of NMFC Item 222-5, a regular slotted container's outer flaps meet at the center and an overlap slotted container's overlap by one inch or more. The lid question turns on a two-thirds line: a telescope box has a top that reaches past two-thirds of the depth, and a box with a cover stops short of that. FEFCO's international case code, which its publishers say may be used in orders and specifications, adds a fourth number after a slash for a telescope's lid height or for the length of an overlap. It also says a style version may be unique to one manufacturer, so a suffix that means something at one converter can mean nothing at the next. The draft writes the style in the code your converter uses and asks when the request doesn't settle it.

Which way it opens is part of the size. Item 222-6 defines length as the larger of the two dimensions of the open face and width as the lesser, with depth measured at right angles to both between the innermost surfaces. So 12 by 10 by 8 and 12 by 8 by 10 hold the same volume and open on different faces. FEFCO's code agrees on the opening and takes dimensions as internal unless stated otherwise. Customers often send the old box's outside size, or the product's. A certificate's size limit points somewhere else again: the classification's united inches add a box's outer length, width and depth. The draft records where each number came from and writes a question when it can't tell inside from outside.

Strength comes in two units, with a vocabulary trap. The classification's certificate has two forms. The burst form shows a bursting test in pounds per square inch, a minimum combined weight of plies, a size limit and a gross weight limit; the edge crush form shows an edge crush test in pounds per inch, a size limit and a gross weight limit. TAPPI publishes T 810 for bursting strength of corrugated board and T 811 for the short column test. A 200 test and a 32 ECT are different claims in different units, so the sheet keeps the one the customer named and never swaps it. The classification also notes that facings are sometimes wrongly called liners, while its own liner is a creased sheet set inside the box around the walls. A flute letter gives wave pitch, about 33 flutes per foot for A and 47 for B, and says nothing about strength alone. If no test is named, the draft asks.

A certificate is someone's guarantee, and some boxes have rules of their own. Under Item 222-1, a box made to meet the item carries a legible certificate of a box manufacturer on an outside surface, in a set form about three inches across, with a city and state that may be the plant or the corporate office. When more than one fiberboard part makes up the outside container, the certificate must state the lowest test of any part, and a box that doesn't meet the item may carry only a straight line stamp. Glassware and earthenware get a section of their own in Item 222-2. A box for hazardous materials is another matter: 49 CFR 178.516 gives fiberboard boxes the identification code 4G and ties such packagings to a design qualification test report. The draft reads a stamp only if your team recorded one and marks these requests for your specialist instead of filling them in. None of this is legal or compliance advice.

The dock, the standards and your reviewer. Buyers add conditions of their own. Montgomery County Public Schools' corrugated box bid asks for truck deliveries on 48 by 40 inch four-way entry pallets, samples packed the way the contract will ship, and any deviation listed and explained on a separate sheet. A request may also name ASTM D5118, which covers the fabrication of new fiberboard boxes, liners and sleeves, or D642 on compressive resistance, or D4169 on performance testing. The draft carries those lines as written and leaves the testing to the converter and the customer. Your reviewer, usually the rep who builds the hardest specs, checks each field against the sheet your team sent: style code, size and opening, flute, grade and test, print colors, quantity, and whether the draft asked what your rep had to ask.

When your reviewer says yes, new requests get a draft specification sheet and a question list for about 30 days.

A rep checks every sheet before it reaches a customer or a converter, answers the questions and decides what goes out for a quote.

Whatever comes next is your choice, one job at a time, with its own price.