Companies choose to automate their packaging line for a range of reasons. This can be to improve flexibility, increase productivity, reduce mistakes or maximise the available floor space. Before you begin to automate your systems, including the addition of pallet wrappers, you need to evaluate the current processes and how these can be improved through automation.
What are your goals?
You need to establish what automation will achieve for your business and what your specific goals are. For example, one of the key benefits of automation within the pharmaceutical industry is to create safer products for consumers. It’s important to decide which of these can be achieved easily and which may take longer to implement. Usually the easiest goal to achieve is that of improving efficiency levels. This generally only requires some small changes to improve it by at least 10%.
What processes will automation benefit?
Your analysis will highlight the particular steps on the line that will benefit the most from being automated. This will enable you to choose the most appropriate equipment, such as pallet wrappers, to achieve your goals and enable automatic systems and human resources to work more efficiently alongside each other. During your analysis you can see where humans add weakness to the production line and how this impacts on downtime. These are often areas that automation can benefit, increasing reliability and speed and reducing maintenance issues and downtime.
Evaluate the available space
One of the most important considerations when selecting automatic packaging equipment, such as those available at http://www.packaging-machines.co.uk/, is how much space there is on the factory floor to accommodate them. Generally automatic lines require a smaller area than manual equipment, as they don’t need to take the space for the operator into account. As commercial space is at a premium, it’s vital that businesses can maximise what they do have available. This will reduce their total overheads and make the business more profitable.
With a solid evaluation of the benefits of automation, you can successfully integrate this into your packaging line. This will benefit many areas of the business, both in terms of productivity and the finances. However, getting the integration process wrong can reduce the efficiency gains that you make and will cost you time and money in the long term.