Businesses need their secondary packaging processes to be safe, consistent, and efficient. A reliable packaging workflow protects your products and helps you send loads safely from point A to point B, and anywhere else they need to go.
Optimizing your workflow requires reviewing the entire process for areas to improve, but one major step to focus on is pallet wrapping.
However, you must ensure that pallets are secure and stable to prevent product damage. Manually wrapping a pallet by hand leaves plenty of room for mistakes, accidents, and inefficiency. Discover the reasons to eliminate manual wrapping in your facility in favor of automatic stretch wrap machines with this overview.
Create Better Containment Force
The goal of wrapping pallets is to create a stable pallet load with the optimal containment force that can hold the load together without damaging any of the products or primary packaging during transit. The layers of stretch film multiplied by the tightness of the wrap determine containment force. Manual wrapping leaves room for human error, which means your containment force won’t be what it needs to be, in most cases increasing the likelihood of product damage. Furthermore, because workers can’t produce as strong of a wrap force, they have to rely on more film layers to create a stable load. This uses up more time and more film than a semi-automatic or automatic stretch wrapper would.
Robopac USA’s industrial wrapping machines use Cube Technology to strategically wrap every load to achieve the best containment force possible. With industrial strength, machine precision, and custom configurations, you can ensure every load is as safe, stable, and cost-effective as possible.
Create Consistently Stable Loads
Even the best employees can’t maintain consistency with every single pallet they wrap. Different workers, different days, or different types of loads will lead to inconsistencies in the wrapping process. This makes it impossible to deliver the same quality of containment force with every single load. Manual hand wrapping puts individual employees in charge of your quality standards for each load. Distractions, lack of training, or simply a bad day can lead to poor containment force, which then leads to damaged products and unhappy customers.
Semi-automatic and automatic stretch wrap machines deliver the same results every time. With strategic film placement and precise controls and configurations, and heavy-duty machinery designed to last, you can guarantee safe and reliable wrapping for every single load.
Reduce Film Waste and Costs
Semi-automatic and automatic stretch wrappers are much more cost-effective than manual hand wrapping, especially when it comes to materials. Workers can’t stretch film as much as machines can, so they must compensate by using more layers of film. Semi-automatic and automatic stretch wrappers, on the other hand, can pre-stretch film to make it go farther. This eliminates unnecessary film revolutions and saves you both time and money. Stretch wrappers are also more strategic and consistent with film placement, which means less wasted film overall.
Reduce Labor Costs
Manual wrapping requires dozens of workers—or more in larger facilities—to do a job that a single machine can do. Even the most qualified and reliable workers can’t keep up with the speed, precision, and reliability of an automatic stretch wrapper. Furthermore, stretch wrap machines require little to no human intervention to run, which means you can keep your workflow moving smoothly without the need for employee supervision.
More importantly, those reliable workers waste their potential on repetitive tasks when they could be dedicating themselves to more value-added work instead. Automatic stretch wrap machines free up your workforce to work on more complicated tasks that machines can’t do as well. This optimizes your workflow so that you can achieve the best productivity possible. At the same time, workers will have more meaningful jobs and feel more fulfilled in their roles.
Improve Workflow Efficiency and Productivity
Semi-automatic and automatic stretch wrappers deliver better accuracy and consistency in less time. The power and efficiency of stretch wrap machines are a boon for your entire workflow. By replacing manual wrapping with semi-automatic or automatic stretch wrapping, you eliminate bottlenecks and disruptions in this stage of the packaging process.
Moreover, stretch wrappers create more consistent productivity for your facility. While laborers who perform manual hand wrapping might have productive days, they will also have slow days, sick days, or time off. Stretch wrap machines maintain the same level of productivity every hour of every day so that your facility can always run at its best efficiency.
Prevent Worker Injuries
Manual wrapping hurts more than just your productivity. Whether it’s accidents or repetitive motion injuries, manual wrapping increases the risk of work injuries. Unstable pallets, sharp corners and edges on cases, and other hazards can cause serious harm to workers if you’re not careful. Even without accidents, manual wrapping is a process that creates poor ergonomics. Bending, lifting, twisting, and other movements involved in manual wrapping can lead to muscle strain and cause back or shoulder injuries.
Employee safety is about more than keeping your workers safe and avoiding compensation lawsuits. Healthy employees who don’t have to deal with consistent strain or risk of injury will be happier at their jobs. Plus, a safer workforce helps lower turnover rate so that you can retain all your best employees over time.
Minimize Product Damage
The goal of stretch wrapping is to protect and stabilize products for safe, reliable shipping. Because of all the problems we’ve discussed above, manual wrapping can’t guarantee product safety the way semi-automatic or automatic stretch wrap machines can. Semi-automatic and automatic stretch wrappers strategically wrap every load with more strength and precision than employees can manage. Stretch wrappers achieve consistent results that guarantee better product protection as you transport, load, ship, and unload products throughout your supply chain.
Increase Customer Satisfaction
Your wrapping methods affect your business even beyond your warehouse. One of the biggest reasons to eliminate manual wrapping in your facility is that automatic stretch wrapping delivers better results for your customers. A more productive and efficient workflow creates a smoother supply chain for your customers. Less product damage means fewer complaints and lost sales. When you evolve from manual wrapping to automatic stretch wrappers, you create better results for everyone who interacts with your company.
Robopac USA is here to help you find the best solutions for your secondary packaging process. Explore our automatic- and semi-automatic stretch wrappers to learn more about how the right equipment can revolutionize your facility.
