Searching for an easier and more efficient way to palletize your loads? Instead of palletizing by hand, consider using top-of-the-line palletizing equipment instead. Wondering how palletizers can improve your business’s palletizing process? Here are eight benefits of using palletizers in your warehouse or distribution center.

What’s a Palletizer? How Does It Work?

A palletizer is a machine that automatically sorts, transfers, and stacks goods onto a pallet. The four main groups of palletizers include robotic, high-level, low-level, and in-line. Each works slightly differently.

Robotic palletizers are either semi-automatic or automatic. They feature a hydraulic robotic arm that lifts products and organizes them onto a pallet. These machines can lift one or multiple products at a time, and they’re still faster and more efficient than hand palletizing.

High and low-level palletizers are used in conjunction with conveyors and a feed area. The difference between the two is the height from which they load products. Low-level palletizers load products from ground level, and high-level palletizers load products from above.

An in-line palletizer can stack multiple rows of products at a time, whereas other palletizers can only stack one row at a time.

The Benefits of Using Palletizers

Are you wondering about the benefits of using palletizers in your warehouse or distribution center? Here are eight notable advantages to machine palletizing:

Reduce Repetitive Motion Injuries

Did you know that two-thirds of all occupational injuries reported each year are the result of repetitive movements? These repetitive motion injuries cost businesses over $80 billion per year. The best way to reduce repetitive motion injuries is to invest in equipment that reduces the amount of time employees spend on repetitive and strenuous tasks or eliminates the need for human labor entirely.

Both semi-automatic and automatic palletizers require minimal human intervention and can handle any sorting, transferring, and stacking without people. Unlike humans, machines can’t sustain injuries by performing repetitive motions. This means a huge reduction in injuries in your distribution center or warehouse.

Better Unitized Loads

Palletizing is a method of unitizing loads for shipment. Unitized loads (which are groups of items that you can handle as one unit instead of separately) are less likely to shift during transportation than individual products, which results in less damage.

Of course, factors besides shifting can damage a unitized load. Dirt, dust, and moisture are just a few. Fortunately, you can prevent them by properly stretch wrapping your palletized loads.

Minimize Loads per Truck

Many people refer to the process of optimizing the amount of space in your trucks as “cubing out.” By palletizing your loads, you can minimize the number of loads per truck and maximize space. Palletizing condenses multiple products into one unit. And when you ship fewer units, the cost of freight per piece goes down. This can save your business a substantial amount of money.

And because palletized loads are uniformly square or rectangular, they’re easy to arrange and stack compactly. This means you can fit a lot more into your trucks.

Reduced Labor Costs

A palletizer will do all the work for you. These machines require minimal human intervention. Semi-automatic palletizers require an operator to perform basic tasks like adjusting settings and pressing buttons, but other than that, they handle every step of the palletizing process automatically.

This means you can reduce labor costs or repurpose labor, which allows you to delegate more important tasks to employees—tasks that machines can’t handle. Palletizers that provide concurrent stretch wrapping can even stretch wrap your loads for you. This saves even more time, money, and labor.

Save Floor Space

Don’t have enough room to accommodate bulky machinery? There are palletizers available that are known for their small footprint compared to other palletizer brands.

Some modern palletizers have a compact and modular design that makes fitting them into tighter spaces easy. Another thing to keep in mind (especially if you’re switching to machines from hand palletizing) is that even though palletizers take up room, they use the room they take up efficiently. Would you rather have an inefficient space in your warehouse? Or would you rather have that space taken up by a productivity-boosting palletizer? For most people, the choice is obvious.

Improved Load Consistency

Mistakes are only human. But mistakes can lead to incorrectly assembled loads, which can lead to unstable pallet loads, which can lead to product damage during transit and even injuries.

Machines, on the other hand, don’t make mistakes. They perform tasks correctly and to your exact specifications every time. This means your loads will always be perfectly assembled and you won’t have to spend time meticulously scrutinizing each load for mistakes before it’s stored or shipped out.

Decreased Likelihood of Damage

There’s a lot that can go wrong when you palletize manually. Your employees might accidentally place boxes incorrectly, for example. These misaligned or overhanging boxes can compromise the stability of the load.

Palletizers sort, transfer, and stack your products the same way every time. This means fewer mistakes and, consequently, more stable loads. And the more stable your loads are, the lower the likelihood of them collapsing or sustaining damage.

Increased Productivity

Palletizers can boost the productivity of your warehouse or distribution center dramatically. For one, machines are faster and more accurate than humans. This means you can produce more in less time and with fewer errors.

Machines aren’t just reliable in that they don’t make mistakes. They’re also hard workers—very hard workers, in fact. Unlike humans, they don’t need time off on the weekends and won’t ever call in sick (and as long as you maintain them, you won’t have to worry about downtime). They’re on the clock 24/7. This means you can keep production levels high even on days when you’re short on staff.

Robopac USA is proud to be the largest secondary packaging equipment company in the world. Whether you need palletizing equipment or something else for your warehouse, come and shop our state-of-the-art and high-tech machines today!

8 Benefits of Using Palletizers