Date of Award

6-1964

Degree Name

Master of Business Administration

Access Setting

Masters Thesis-Open Access

Abstract

The Nature of the Problem

Variation in Package Fill

When a consumer purchase of package of a dry grocery product he expects to receive a package which is properly filled, i.e., a package which contains at least the stated net weight and that contains an amount of volume which closely approximate the volume capacity of the package.

Each year hundreds of producers of dry grocery products are packaging and distributing billions of packages of their products. On each of these packages can be found a statement as to the amount of product contained, usually expressed in terms of net weight. If the contents of every package were weighed it would be found that very few of these packages would contain the stated weight. The contents of a large group of packages of a given product, when weighed and recorded so as to be grouped by weighing increments, form a frequency distribution. This is true for any product, since "It is a known fact that every filling machine gives a weight-distribution curve." The central location and dispersion of the distribution are dependent on many factors.

Similarly, measurements of the volume of a group of packages would yield a distribution of volume. The central location and dispersion of the volume distribution are also dependent on many factors. The primary sources of weight and volume variation are discussed briefly below.

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