MavPak

John Goo founded MavPak in 2016 with a mission to simplify packaging and supplies world for industrial companies based in central Indiana. Today, MavPak provides packaging and distribution services, vendor-managed inventory, and more recently, warehousing and storage capabilities, to enable its customers to efficiently manage and operate their supply chains. As part of its packaging services arm, MavPak identifies the appropriate supplies for each individual customers’ products and trains their workforce on the most effective packaging processes. For example, packaging supplies could include boxes, plastic wrap, bubble wrap, cardboard boxes, shrink wrap and other specialized supplies for industrial products of all shapes and sizes. MavPak also goes beyond just providing packaging supplies, they consult with and advise their customers on the right equipment, machinery and maintenance used to process, protect and ship products.

In June of 2021, Anthony (Tony) Boris came on board the firm as Director of Strategic Initiatives to further build out the warehousing and storage arm of MavPak’s business. This side of MavPak’s business focuses on receiving, processing, storing and shipping products on behalf of its customers–including food and beverage, consumer, e-commerce and other retail companies. The opportunity, Tony explained, “grew from the company’s experience in searching for a 3rd party logistics company (3PL) that could satisfy its supply chain needs for packaging supplies.” As a solution, MavPak leased a facility that was larger than its immediate requirements but offered some of the space to its packaging customers as a short-term solution for their overflow products. Its warehousing division started with 140,000 square feet and 6 MavPak employees in 2021, and today, it has grown to over 700,000 square feet with nearly 35 employees. “As we scale and grow our warehousing capabilities, we’re identifying the need for specialists in IT roles,” he said. “People such as Brantley Armour, our IT systems manager and Cait Bitts, administrator of technology systems, are helping us leverage new technologies like AI.”

Mike Parsley, MavPak’s Director of Operations, further explained how technology adoption and business growth have gone hand in hand as the firm has expanded its presence in central Indiana. “Implementing AI and automation in our reordering processes has been a game-changer for our operations. Using ConverSight has significantly enhanced our communication channels, ensuring that all departments are seamlessly aligned. Moreover, the speed of our delivery processes has improved dramatically, allowing us to meet customer demands more efficiently, minimize waste, and deliver more reliably than ever before,” he said. By 2024, under John’s continuing leadership as President, MavPak opened its third facility in nearby Whitestown, with its headquarters remaining on the Indianapolis northeast side.

Cait Bitts is Administrator of Technology Systems for MavPak. “My role is to bring our systems together, looking at all the places we have information, keep information and store information, to make it easy for people to access it,” she explained. “I find new ways to automate the movement of information to make our employees more efficient and improve their day-to-day. We offer vendor-managed inventory, which means we keep track of inventory for our customers. ‘How many boxes are you using?’ On a broader scale, ‘how can we make sure you never run out, but you never have more on your floor than you need?’ It’s all about trying to help, to serve our customers and make sure they have what they need to be successful.”

For MavPak’s local customers, it involves sending an employee to the customer’s warehouse to count the inventory and report back what is in stock and what is needed from a packaging supplies standpoint. Initially, that was a “pen-and-paper” job requiring the MavPak representative to wander around the warehouse, writing down each item’s function, the item number and quantity on-hand. That data, and details on how frequently the customer used each item and the lead time required for MavPak to get the item in-house, were key to managing the customer’s inventory. But as MavPak grew and gained customers outside of Indiana, a tech solution was needed to succeed at scale. The company chose Indianapolis-based ConverSight to help deploy an AI platform for enhanced inventory decision-making and augmented analytics. As a provider of generative AI (genAI), Conversight serves manufacturing and logistics customers globally. The tech provider helps customers like MavPak respond to changes in supply and demand through real-time data and augmented analytics with a conversational feature where users can self-create dashboards and uncover answers to complex questions.

Working with ConverSight, MavPak built custom order forms so its customers can keep MavPak apprised of how many packaging supplies are currently stored in-house. Cait said, “Our customers tell us how much inventory they have on-hand and then automated ordering rules help us determine whether and when we need to place another packaging supplies order.” As an example, if the ordering rule for Company A is that, if it has fewer than 50 of a certain box on hand, MavPak will need to place an order for more stock.

“Using the Conversight platform, we have much greater control over the orders we’re placing for our customers, getting them the material they need at the time they need it,” Cait explained. “We never want them to run out because we misjudged the number they had on hand. ConverSight has bridged that gap for us, so it’s easier for our team to focus on what actually matters,” Cait said. “It isn’t just about placing orders; it’s making sure our customers know when that order will be delivered to them, and that they will have everything they need to ship their products on time. All this date is a lot for one human brain to handle and AI.”

“The AI platform also accommodates our different services for different customers,” Brantley said. While some customers elect to have their own employees doing the product counts and entering the data into MavPak’s system, others choose to have MavPak’s customer service representatives doing that. “It is one less thing that we have to worry about. It just depends on what our customers need. ‘We’ve got this for you,’” Brantley explained.

With a diverse customer base—ranging from ecommerce, food and beverage, medical, and other industrial companies—MavPak’s services are a complicated process for each customer. Manually comparing order requirements for each customer every week would be a significant undertaking without the software platform’s genAI and automated analytics. “I like data,” Cait smiled. “I like looking at data. I like analyzing data. But if I had to do it all day, every day, it’s just not compatible with the way we want to serve our customers.”

Customer feedback has reinforced MavPak’s decision to develop and scale the AI platform. “Working with the Conversight platform gives us all so much time back. It also eliminates the guesswork and the potential for errors in a very complex, ever-changing process,” Cait said. “And that’s not just for our team, but for our customers, too. Their teams can focus on what matters to their business, not on whether they need to order more packaging supplies.”

“AI is a tool that’s here to help expedite our processes and gain efficiencies,” Brantley said. “We’re not training anyone out of a job, AI is just shifting what we need to specialize in.” He pointed to MavPak’s growth as proving that concept. “As MavPak has grown, we have been able to bring on many new people and say, ‘Okay, this is now your focus’, whether that’s better customer service, more accurate inventory management, or more efficient processes, our people are still what drives our success as a company.”