Picture this: You are at the beginning of your company’s serialization effort. As you began, the focus was on the packaging line. This huge step in the process connects your plant’s packaging line(s) to your corporate serial number repository to record serialization numbers. You have moved your serialized product from the packaging line to the warehouse. Now, on the next step of the journey, you need to respond to your business colleagues’ requests for additional QA samples from inventory. In order to obtain a sample of the serialized product, you have to open pallets, cases, and perhaps even inner packs. Once those unit product samples are removed, you would now need to reassemble into a new complete inner packs and cases. And thus, you are facing REWORK.

For our definition, rework is: the process of breaking down and reassembling serialized materials from unit cartons, inner packs, cases, and/or pallets, and then, reassembling them into new complete inner packs or cases. While doing rework, you will not be making new sellable serialized units, but you will disassemble and reassemble everything else. Rework may also be called repacking.

Situations that may cause you to rework your serialized materials are: damage in material handling, reassembly to new case or pallet configurations, the need to provide additional QA samples or retention samples, or the change of a packaging component. Rework can extend the functionality in the packaging production line operations or be used in warehouse operations.