Companies, specifically manufacturers, are always looking for ways to make improvements in processes that can net them gains in efficiency, specifically in production or logistics. Palletizers, or automated packaging machines, are one of the best ways to capture such process improvement benefits.
By shifting your processes from hand stacking and processing to a more automated model, you won’t just take a step forward but leap into the future — all while injecting vitality into your operation.
Why Your Packaging and Warehousing Operations Need Automation
There are many reasons why now is the time to jump from using labor to deploying machinery in your secondary packaging tasks.
Technology has made massive strides in recent years. It’s no longer just science fiction to consider using machines for even complex repetitive tasks. Additionally, some of today’s palletizers are designed and engineered to be modular, so you can deploy what feels like a custom solution in your shop by only using the components you need.
That option means you can redeploy your expensive labor to other, more intuition-intensive tasks and leave the menial jobs to the robots.
And that means you’ll reduce risks from many quarters:
- Machines don’t get sick, require quarantine, or need withholding and payroll
- Machines are perfectly consistent
- Machines are faster than humans and don’t take breaks
By automating the secondary packaging tasks in your warehouse or shipping operations, you can cut out a lot of overhead and risk while simultaneously increasing throughput capability, boosting morale, and improving QA. The choice to automate is a decision that almost makes itself.
How Palletizers Can Help Streamline Packaging Services
For many end-of-line industrial packaging operations, palletizers are a necessity:
- Food and beverage
- Convenience and specialty products
- Manufacturing operations
Palletizers can streamline your process by sorting, transferring, and arranging products on pallets for shipping. The importance of this critical step in the process of getting your products into the hands of your customers cannot be overstated.
Palletizers are able to arrange and build individual rows for optimal security in shipment by “seeing” the contents of the entire pallet and stacking each component in the exact right place.
Additionally, these machines integrate sheet handling, ensuring each package in the load remains secure and undamaged. On top of that, palletizer systems can be set up for concurrent stretch wrapping so that each major section of each pallet is individually stretch-wrapped for optimal strength and security in shipping.
The last thing you want is for your shipping loads to fail in transit somewhere between you and the customer because it wasn’t palletized as well as it should have been.
The Benefits of Palletizers
The business landscape is changing fast, and you need solutions. Packaging machinery can deliver results that not only keep pace but keep you ahead of the curve.
Whether that means you’re ahead of your competition or that you’re better able to anticipate customer demand, being on top of the orders that come in every day is a desirable outcome. Using palletizers in your packaging operations can also yield other benefits, including:
Improved Consistency
Inconsistency is a human trait, and while it adds character and can be endearing in a person sometimes, it’s completely undesirable when it comes to your operations. Machines perform to spec a thousand times out of a thousand and don’t need a QA supervisor to double-check their work.
Unitized Loads
A perfectly unitized pallet is as good as a single entity. Though it is composed of many parts, it can be securely transported as one. Palletizers accomplish this desirable objective as a matter of course; it’s simply what they do.
Additionally, a properly unitized load is effectively sealed off against dust, moisture, and other environmental influences that can negatively impact the integrity of your shipment.
Saved Space
Some argue that palletizers take up too much floor space. While some do have a large footprint, there are compact models available that take up much less space. However, considering all the efficiency this machinery adds to your packaging operations, the benefits significantly outweigh the drawbacks.
Palletizers also save space in each load by building every pallet more efficiently than a human ever could. And that means more loads will “cube out,” meaning you’ll be using every available cubic inch in each truck more often. Additionally, loads are being constructed faster, thus being able to be moved out of your warehouse faster and taking up less storage space.
Efficient Shipping
When every pallet is uniform, you’re maximizing both floor space and the “cube” of each truck. That means you can ship more efficiently and decrease your shipping overhead costs.
Reduced Exposure to Risk of Damage
Considering the widely available alternatives today, manual palletization has room for potential for error, which means you could suffer massive exposure to risk from in-transit damage to your freight.
Packages that don’t quite fit and stick out or cause uneven row formations compromise the integrity of the load. You can avoid these errors with palletizers and ensure more product gets to the customer as it should: in perfect shape.
Reduced Injury from Repetitive Motion
Employers spend tens of billions of dollars on healthcare costs associated with employee repetitive motion injuries every year. Palletizers allow you to redeploy your valuable human labor elsewhere in your operation, saving you money and saving your people the possibility of injury.
Reduced Labor Costs
When you can drastically minimize human labor — or completely remove it from your packaging operations equation — you’ll save on what can often be the biggest expenditure in a given business.
Increased Productivity
Since machines are both quicker and more accurate than humans, your throughput will enjoy heights it’s never seen before — and the same goes for order accuracy. Anything that positively impacts customer service like this is a win.
How Can Palletizers Change the Game for You?
Feeling inspired? To investigate for yourself how automating your packaging operations could make a huge impact on you, the people you work with, and the people your business serves, reach out to Korpack to get more information today. We’re ready to help expedite your automation.
