For many organizations, testing of packaged-products in the laboratory is an integral part of package design, quality assurance, and logistics planning for existing, changing, or new product distribution. The International Safe Transit Association (ISTA) has to date certified over 400 testing laboratories worldwide, and there are undoubtedly many more labs in existence. It has been estimated that half a million ISTA tests have been conducted in the last 50 years. Yet such testing is often misunderstood, with the results either given more or less credibility than warranted, and with many opportunities for packaging improvement and other benefits going unrecognized.

Much of the misunderstanding is related to the fact that ``packaged-product laboratory testing`` is not just a single entity, but a suite of various approaches with different costs, complexities, and effectiveness. This paper presents the major categories of packaged-product tests in some detail - non-simulation, general simulation, and focused simulation - and discusses the types of decisions and actions which can be supported by each. Control of distribution damage is perhaps the most straightforward objective, but reduction of packaging and related costs and mitigation of environmental impacts can also be accomplished through proper testing and interpretation/application of the results.