Adopting automated technology is a big move for any business. In secondary packaging facilities, automation can enhance your workflow and improve speed, consistency, and safety.
Automation is a boon for both throughput and labor. However, facilities must make informed decisions about their equipment and processes to best allocate their resources and successfully implement automatic solutions.
Understanding how automating can improve your throughput and labor is the key to making the most of your automation upgrades. Read on to learn more about how different automated solutions—such as stretch wrappers, palletizers, and more—work together to create a more efficient and productive facility.
Improving Throughput in Your Facility
In secondary packaging facilities, throughput refers to the number of products that pass through your workflow each day. Higher throughput capacity allows you to successfully move more products through your packaging line in less time. Efficiency, accuracy, and consistency are all key to improving throughput in your facility.
Automated solutions enhance your workflow so that you can handle more products and increase your overall throughput. With faster processes and more consistent results, facilities can streamline their packaging lines without sacrificing quality or safety.
Consistency Is Everything
Inconsistencies—even small inconsistencies—slow down your workflow. For example, products on a hand-stacked pallet will be in a slightly different place every time. Even if the difference is only an inch, that inch can be the difference between a secure product load and a load that shifts and tips when you move it. Automated palletizers, on the other hand, place products in the exact right position every time.
Consistency is key in wrapping, packing, palletizing, and every other process your products go through. When your equipment wraps, stacks, and packs products the right way every time, you can always trust your products to move successfully through your supply chain.
Additionally, consistency helps you avoid time-consuming mistakes. Instead of fixing minor human errors, your team can focus on moving more products through your packaging line quickly.
Precision Creates Secure Packaging
Product loads need to be secure when they move throughout the facility. An unstable or unbalanced load can shift, tip, and fall, causing harm to employees, equipment, and products. Secondary packaging facilities need secure packaging techniques that they can rely on.
Automatic and semi-automatic stretch wrapping machines deliver with precision. Programmable settings allow workers to create detailed and accurate format changes. These allow stretch wrappers to create a reliable and secure load for every type of product that moves through your packaging line.
Stable product loads can move faster through your facility without fear of damage. Even better, precise and consistent packaging leads to less product damage further down the supply chain. When pallets arrive safely at their end destinations, customers can immediately put those products on their shelves. This speeds up production for everybody and creates more satisfied customers for your business.
Operate at Optimal Speeds
In addition to consistency and precision, automatic machinery offers greater power and speed than manual labor can achieve. As a result, automatic stretch wrappers, case packers, and palletizers help companies optimize efficiency and move more products through the facility.
At the same time, reliable solutions—such as Robopac USA’s secondary packaging equipment—experience minimal downtime. When machines can operate at faster speeds with no disruptions, you can deliver more products with better results. All in all, automatic solutions are more efficient and productive than manual alternatives.
Improving Labor, Productivity, and Morale
Throughput isn’t the only quality your facility should focus on. Automation can also enhance your workforce. Efficient and reliable machinery changes the way your team operates. By improving labor, you also improve productivity and morale across the board. This results in happier, safer, and more motivated workers who will, in turn, achieve greater results for your business.
High-Quality Results All Day Long
Automated equipment doesn’t need to take breaks, call in sick, or stop working once a shift ends. Because your machines can keep running all day, every day, you can keep your packaging line moving even when employees need to take breaks. Automation helps prevent burnout by taking over various tasks that would otherwise require employee attention.
Eliminate Tedious or Strenuous Labor
Stretch wrappers, packers, palletizers, and other automated machinery accomplish menial tasks with better results than even the best employees. This benefits both you and your workers. Automatic equipment thrives with repetitive, tedious, and strenuous tasks, giving your employees more time and energy to devote to other jobs.
Automation frees your labor to focus on more specialized tasks that are more interesting and rewarding than packing, stacking, or wrapping product loads. As a result, employees get to enjoy more fulfilling roles rather than the boring and tedious parts of the workflow. Moreover, giving strenuous tasks to machinery helps your employees avoid work-related injuries that can stem from repetitive motion or muscle strain.
Meaningful Work Increases Morale
When employees are responsible for more interesting and meaningful tasks, they feel more fulfilled at work. Feelings of accomplishment and satisfaction do more than just make your workforce feel good. Happy employees have more passion and motivation for their jobs. Employee satisfaction boosts collaboration and productivity throughout your entire facility.
Additionally, happy employees are less likely to leave for other jobs. This improves your turnover rate, which saves you money and keeps experienced employees on your staff.
Improve Employee Safety
All employees make mistakes from time to time. However, in a secondary packaging facility, even small mistakes can pose a great risk to your staff. Poorly stacked pallets, improper stretch wrapping, and other errors can lead to unstable loads that can tip or fall on workers. Even the process of packing, stacking, or wrapping product loads can be dangerous as employees navigate loose products, sharp corners, and other hazards.
Automated solutions are sturdier than employees and don’t run a risk of hurting themselves, even if something goes wrong. As a result, automation is a key part of improving employee safety in your distribution center.
Invest in High-Quality Automated Solutions
When it’s time to improve your throughput and labor with automation, don’t choose just any machinery. Make the most of your investment by working with an expert wrapping machine manufacturer like Robopac USA. Contact our team today to learn more about the impact our wrapping, packing, and palletizing solutions can have on your facility.
