Do you feel like your packaging facility isn’t as productive as it could be? If so, you’re probably researching ways to change that. The biggest thing hindering most modern businesses is a lack of automation, especially when it comes to smaller businesses. If you want to keep up in a technology-based global market, automation is essential.
Automation works by streamlining the different processes of your warehouse, making them faster and more precise while reducing labor costs. This allows you to get more work done in a single day and ensures that said work is of the highest possible quality. There are many types of automatic secondary packaging machinery that can improve your business, including packers, palletizers, stretch wrappers, and more. In this guide, we’ll explain how automation can make your business more productive and the role that stretch wrappers—horizontal stretch wrappers, to be specific—play in that. Here’s how a horizontal stretch wrapper can positively impact your business.
Automation Is the Key To Success
If you want to improve the productivity and efficiency of your business, investing in company-wide automation is a must. Automation refers to the process of moving inventory into, throughout, and out of your warehouse with minimal need for human intervention. In a packaging facility, the most common type of automation you’ll use involves automated machinery and robots. That doesn’t mean automation is exclusively about machines, however. You can also automate your business by using software to replace time-consuming tasks such as tracking, organization, and document/data storage.
The transition from a manual warehouse to an automatic one can take a while to get used to. However, in the long run, automation will allow your business to keep up with the competition and meet—if not exceed—client expectations. There are many ways that automation can benefit your warehouse, as we will outline below.
Optimized Labor
With automation, you can reduce the number of mundane tasks that you need to perform each day. This will allow you to fill you and your worker’s days with more important and pressing tasks, such as machine maintenance and brainstorming ways to improve your business’s productivity and bottom line.
Improved Efficiency
Automation will improve the speed and accuracy of your processes, allowing you to accomplish more in less time.
Better Inventory Management
There are certain kinds of automatic machines that can help you keep accurate records of your inventory and ensure you are storing items in the correct places. This will help your warehouse avoid overstock and maintain in-stock availability. It will also ensure workers aren’t spending valuable time searching for missing or misplaced items.
Happier Clients
Automation will reduce the number of errors made during the packing process and make the process a lot faster. These two factors will contribute to productivity and keep shipping delays to a minimum.
Nothing makes customers more frustrated than having the delivery of their product continuously delayed or having their package arrive at their doorstep damaged. Investing in automation will help you ensure customers receive their products on time and in good condition.
The Role That Stretch Wrapping Machines Play in Automation
An essential part of every warehouse is stretch wrapping machinery. There are many benefits to stretch wrapping your loads. In fact, stretch wrapping your pallet loads is one of the best ways to keep them safe and secure during shipment. This is because stretch wrap protects the load from damage and contaminants such as dirt, dust, and moisture. Many smaller businesses still hand-wrap their loads, but there’s no denying that it’s much more efficient to let a machine handle the process. Using stretch wrapping machines to wrap your loads can improve safety, save you time, and save you money by cutting down on the amount of film used per load.
There are two main types of stretch wrapping machines: semi-automatic and automatic. Semi-automatic stretch wrapping machines require an operator to be present. The operator’s job is to place the load on the stretch wrapper, attach the film to the load, then cut the film at the end of the wrap cycle. After that, the machine will take over and wrap the load. Unlike semi-automatic machines, automatic stretch wrappers require almost no human intervention. The loads are delivered to the machine by a conveyor, automatically wrapped by the machine, then carried away from the machine by another section of conveyor. Both options have their own advantages and disadvantages.
Semi-automatic machines are normally recommended for low volume applications, while automatic machines are better suited to high volume applications. Semi-automatic machines also come in different types. The most popular types of semi-automatic stretch machines include portable, turntable, rotary arm, and horizontal stretch wrappers.
What Are the Benefits of a Horizontal Stretch Wrapper?
If you’re planning to invest in automatic secondary packaging machinery for your warehouse, one kind of machine you may be considering is the horizontal stretch wrapper. There are many ways a horizontal stretch wrapper can positively impact your business.
A horizontal stretch wrapper is a type of stretch wrapper that uses a rotating ring to wrap objects that are placed inside of it. Horizontal stretch wrappers are ideal for wrapping objects that are larger or wider than average, such as lumber, doors, windows, carpets, textiles, piping, tubing, and more. Other types of stretch wrappers may not be able to wrap these kinds of products safely or efficiently, thereby necessitating the use of a horizontal stretch wrapper. If you wrap these kinds of products on a regular basis, horizontal stretch wrappers are one of the best kinds of stretch wrapping machines for your business. A horizontal stretch wrapper will also provide many of the same benefits as other types of stretch wrapping machines. They will improve containment on the load to ensure it ships properly, reducing the likelihood of costly primary packaging and product damage.
If you’re in need of reliable, state-of-the-art secondary packaging machinery for your business, come check out Robopac USA’s diverse selection of case packers for sale. Our machines are built with the most advanced technology in mind. Out R-Connect and CUBE Technology comes with a variety of benefits, ranging from the ability to connect to your devices remotely to ensuring the integrity of your products. Come and browse through our full inventory of automatic equipment today!
