If you’re frustrated by your packaging line’s inability to meet demand, or by high labor or material costs, it may be time to automate. Here are eight reasons why you should consider automated packaging.
1. You Need to Improve Order Accuracy and Efficiency
Manual packing can lead to a number of quality and accuracy errors that can increase your overall operating costs. Automated packaging, however, guarantees consistent quality, and also better aesthetics. This results in fewer returns, happier customers and more repeat business.
2. You Expect to Grow
If you find your line struggling to keep pace now, imagine what might happen after you achieve your growth potential. The inability to keep up with demand is the #1 reason businesses look into automated packaging equipment. Being prepared now, ahead of your anticipated growth, will help you meet your future goals. Waiting too long, however, could keep you from fulfilling future purchase orders, and losing both vendors and customers.
3. Your Labor Costs are High
Labor costs don’t only include salaries or hourly wages, but also Social Security/Medicare, worker’s comp, unemployment and vacation time. Also, when your staff gets sick you need to bring in temp workers, which increases labor costs even more. Automated packaging equipment, on the other hand, can often be run by a single operator. The machinery may pay for itself in one or two years from labor savings alone.
It can be hard to eliminate the jobs of hardworking people, and automated packaging doesn’t mean you need to. Instead, it lets you put some of your team to better use, such as moving employees to customer service or IT. In the end, this can lead to happier customers, which in turn can lead to greater sales.
4. Your Labor Can’t Keep Up
If your team is missing its targets, retailers could consider dropping your products altogether. Simply asking your team to working harder—if that’s even feasible with your current operations—merely adds stress which often leads to mistakes and high turnover. The resulting constant cycling of hiring that results, along with the added costs and aggravations that go along with it, may be reason enough to consider automated packaging.
Also remember—additional shifts means your existing machines need to work harder, and longer, too. When factoring in costs, don’t forget to add in the extra repair bills for your existing machinery by keeping things status quo, and the cost of downtime when waiting for those repairs to be made.
5. You are Concerned About Worker Safety
Repetitive motions can, over time, increase workplace injuries. This hurts your bottom line in terms of paid leave and disability. These injuries include those caused by a lack of safety guards on older equipment, back injuries from manual lifting, carpal tunnel syndrome, and even respiratory illnesses from poor air circulation. The reduction in your workman’s compensation claims may easily justify your automated packaging expense.
6. You Have Too Much Waste
Manual labor often leads to more material waste than automated packaging machinery. People can overfill bags, puncture bags and use more material than necessary to produce and package your product. Automation makes cuts and fills much more precisely than manual filling. The cost saving may surprise you.
7. Your Packaging is Simple and Repetitive
Automation is ideal for doing simple, repetitive operations over and over again. If you have simple shaped boxes, packing, filling and other related packaging demands, automation is a no-brainer. If you have irregular shaped, large or bulky items, however, automation may or may not be the answer. You’ll want to talk to one of our TDI Packsys specialists for guidance.
8. You Have Lengthy Changeovers
Industrial Packaging magazine recently reported on one business that produced several different items per week, which necessitated line changeovers that could take up to eight hours to complete. “During these tedious changeovers, as many as 20 employees were hanging around while they waited for the next product and machinery to be ready,” the article reported. After the company re-imagined their packaging process and added high-speed automated packaging lines, these tortuous changeovers were eliminated.
TDI Packsys Can Satisfy Your Automated Packaging Needs
Automating your packaging line means you can respond quickly to demand increases, so vendors get their products on time. It means employees can work smarter and safer, and customers are more satisfied. Contact TDI Packsys to learn
more about how our automated packaging lines can save you money, and meet your seal of approval.
