Letter from the province – All wrapped up
The pressure to be both more efficient and more environmentally friendly is real, how could automating your packaging process impact this?
Compare manual packing into standardized cartons with the newer automated solutions where the cartons are cut or folded down to save space, the automated solutions normally comes out on top, making it possible to ship less air. Other factors that will impact this are your ability to box-caculate your orders, if you allow products higher than the folding/cutting level, oddly shaped products or forwarders transport weight, length or volume thresholds.
Compare manual packaging into plastic bags with automated packaging either into plastic bags or cartons, you will most likely see an increase in air shipped. This is due to the fact that the manually packed bags are one of the most volume effective. This doesn’t mean that there isn’t other positive impacts in following the automated road. From an environmental standpoint the cardboard is seen as a more renewable resource, a move from plastic to cardboard will normally have a positive environmental impact, but as always, the degree of re-used material, the end customers city/country’s ability to recycle will impact.
From a productivity perspective the automated solutions are fast, speeds of between 13-15 packages per minute (!) is common. Being able to produce more with less people also helps to handle peaks in order volume.
The biggest impact on the bottom line is the efficiency increase the packaging automation enables. If we get a high volume of our orders through the automation it will drop the opex. As with all automation, the targeted process will be a lot more efficient but will also effect the surrounding processes. As we change the way we work in order to get the benefits, this will impact the other processes that are connected to it. When we automated the packaging process we need to make sure that the picking processes works hand in hand with it. Two examples of normal impacts are – one; that the EAN/SKU scan is removed from the packaging, this forces the check of the correct item upstream to the picking process. And two; that we need to introduce the pick to cartons normally with an internal unique ID before the picking process.
Different suppliers of packaging automation have different solutions and concepts and they varies in the characteristics and the impact these give our business. Examples on characteristics are;
- Paper quality. How thin corrugated papper can the automation handle
- Degree of volume. How big is the volume scope based on a specific footprint,
- Flexibility. Possibility to change the footprint after go live
- Opex. Aftermarked support & consumption cost
- Bells and whistles. Like weight check, content photo, automatic filling material, etc..
As always, we and our supplier need to understand the impact this mechanization makes on our business, as our packaging change into a production line process. By having control of and working with all the characteristics in our new automation we lower the investment risk and get all wrapped up.
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Adviser and Project Management within Supply Chain, Warehousing, Whse processes, Distribution and Automation.
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