Automation has progressed steadily because of the many benefits. Increased productivity is but one of them, though the return on the investment from greater productivity is often justified enough to seek out new ways to automate work in your facility. While manufacturing is heavily automated, packaging and shipping are two areas where automation is starting to take off. Here are 4 ways your factory could benefit from automated packing equipment.
Reduced Material Costs
Automation can dramatically reduce labor costs since it could wrap a pallet in a fraction of the time one of your team members could. A wrapping machine could be justified if you had as few as a dozen loads a day. It is also notable for the fact that it would use far less tape than the average person, and it would still wrap the boxes effectively.
Greater Product Protection
It actually matters when someone ships product in boxes with dented corners and insufficient tape. The odds that the box will fail to withstand the pressure it is under when loaded into a truck or cargo container go up dramatically. When your customers receive partially crushed loads of product, they demand replacements or refunds. Both of these solutions are costly. If the product could survive the damage, the damaged boxes themselves hurt your company’s reputation. In the case of shipping items individually to customers, it makes them wonder if you care about the product and by extension them.
One solution is to automate the process of making the cardboard boxes, also known as erecting them. A case erector, for instance, would allow you to assemble anywhere from ten to forty boxes a minute, each one perfectly assembled. Now you don’t have to worry about the product being damaged in storage or in transit. A case erector is also a great addition for anyone who receives bulk orders and then demands everyone work overtime to make boxes. In these cases, the case erector is saving them time and the associated labor costs as well as improving overall quality.
Improved Safety
Packaging automation improves workplace safety. People aren’t overwhelmed trying to stack or wrap boxes. Buy a stretch wrapper with a built-in scale, and no one has to double-handle the load to check the weight before loading and shipping it.
No one develops repetitive stress injuries erecting boxes all day or taping them shut. And when the machine erects the boxes or tapes them up, your team is free to work on other tasks that can’t be automated.
A side benefit of packaging automation is that you can erect, fill and wrap boxes quickly as soon as you know they’re needed. You don’t have piles of empty boxes that obstruct people’s view or pieces of cardboard laying around that someone could slip-on.
Increased Capacity
A well-designed production line with wrapping machines and case erectors can now deliver fully wrapped pallets ready to be loaded in trucks sent to distributors. Your business has eliminated a choke point, and the overall production rate of the facility goes up. You’re not limited by how fast people can erect, pack, wrap and load boxes.
Conclusion
Automated packaging equipment may increase the productivity and efficiency of every organization that uses it. However, the other benefits it brings are reason enough to consider packaging automation, too.
