One of the biggest causes for concern in business is the rising costs and the best approaches you can take to help combat increasing expenditure and make savings where possible. Fortunately, there are ways to keep your business sustainable and ensure a healthy bottom line, one of these is through automation, particularly in the packaging sector with packaging automation processes.
An important consideration for businesses is how to ensure a packaging process provides a respectable return on investment. So often, the cost of staff leads to non-value-added processes that are wasting both time and money. What companies need to do is find ways to be greener, more sustainable, reduces costs and eliminate wastage. One of the best ways to do this is through automated packaging machinery and automating packaging processes.
What is packaging automation?
Packaging automation uses packaging machinery at various stages of the packaging process such as filling and sealing boxes, wrapping and labelling machines and coding and strapping products. Machinery can be both automatic and semi-automatic, covering a range of tasks but, as the name suggests, semi-automatic packaging machinery will require more labour.
Depending on the return on investment you can receive will play a part on the type of automated packaging machinery that will provide the most benefits and least costs to your business.
Seven benefits of packaging automation
- Productivity
Typically, automated packaging machinery will process goods much faster than the manual methods. Depending on the type of automation and the number of products you need to package, a machine will be able to wrap hundreds of items a minute, for example into blister packs. With packaging machinery, you can dramatically increase productivity to save time and ensure a faster production line.
- Safer working conditions
If the items that you are packaging are bulky, cumbersome and heavy, then there can be a risk for health and safety. If your business employs personnel to package products that are heavy, then you have the chance of injury and costly time off work as well as the cost involved with ensuring rigorous health and safety compliance. Automated packaging takes away this problematic issue and creates a safer working environment.
- Meticulous quality
With automated packaging, you can be sure that every package is well-protected through a standardised packing process. With automated packaging, each product has a tailored packaging design and shape so that you can be sure of the same level of protection for each item, and there is a routine use of stock.
- Saving the planet with reduced wastage
One environmental benefit of packaging automation is that a packaging machine will only use a set amount of material and will be economical in its use of material, cutting to size and creating an efficient pattern that maximises protection out of the minimum level of material. This method can also save your business a considerable amount in packaging costs by reducing the amount of waste and streamlining the types of packaging you need to prevent over-ordering of various materials.
- Specialised packaging
Whatever your product is, you can find an automated solution that is tailored to your item. Whether is vacuum packing, pressure filling, sterilised or inflatable, you can find the right piece of equipment to suit your bespoke needs. If you package many different products, then an on-demand solution that tailors each package to suit the shape of the product is ideal.
- Lower costs
Labour intensive processes can be expensive but also fluctuating, making it hard to calculate the budget required for your packaging sector and the cost of packaging per product. Fortunately, automated packaging solutions are standardised, typically with a fixed price for the machinery as a set amount of packaging per product that can be calculated easily. By reducing the labour requirements, you can find a use for staff in value-adding areas elsewhere in the business.
- Efficiency
Automated packaging can serve as a double benefit, covering the role that is too repetitive and straining for staff to undertake happily and also take on the tasks that are too difficult for a human to do. Whether it’s a large item, monotonous smaller jobs that are the same day in, day out or a job for multiple people, then automation may be the best way to combat these problems and have an efficient process. Rather than struggling with employing staff or worker retention, you have a reliable packaging machine that can take on the work and isn’t afraid of a repetitive task.
If you would like to speak to one of the Ribble team about our environmental standards or find out how packaging automation could help your business, get in touch.
