In a fast-paced business environment, it pays to do things fast. This is especially notable in eCommerce, where 48% of customers prefer fast deliveries. This means that businesses must adjust their packaging practices to facilitate rapid packaging, shipping, and delivery.
While hiring more employees to meet your packaging demands might do the trick, it also significantly increases your operating budget and leaves room for human error. However, integrating advanced technologies into the packaging process can significantly cut operational costs and maximize productivity.
Here are a few other ways automation could benefit the packaging industry.
Increased Efficiency
The 70% rule for productivity states that employees are most productive when they work most of the time at a less intense pace, rather than working as hard as they can from day to day. Since factories are limited to operating only 9 hours a day, businesses may have a hard time reaching their target when they apply the 70% rule.
However, by leveraging an automated system, businesses in the packaging industry can effectively reduce reliance on human labor, thus minimizing their employees’ workload. Having an automated system also reduces the number of employees required and enhances productivity by producing more products in less time.
Reduced Downtime
Companies lose an average of $260,000 per hour to downtime. Human error remains one of the biggest contributors to downtime in manufacturing plants. By taking human error out of the equation, companies can effectively reduce the possibility of downtime while increasing productivity.
Seamless Scalability
Most businesses operate in peaks and troughs. For businesses that rely heavily on human labor, low periods often result in wasted expenditure or staff layoffs. In contrast, high periods are characterized by the need to onboard staff quickly.
Using automated machinery in the packaging process allows you to scale production up or down depending on demand. Most packaging machines can also be reconfigured to handle different packaging materials and products, thus promoting adaptability.
Improved Quality Control
Even your most qualified and experienced employee can make a mistake – that’s human nature. Machines, on the other hand, only do what they’re programmed to do.
By utilizing various technologies, including sensors, cameras, and software, automated packaging machines can ensure consistent quality and accuracy across all product lines, thus helping the business build a trusted reputation for packaging excellence.
Improved Safety
Safety is one of the biggest concerns for most businesses in the manufacturing and packaging industries. Despite the various measures taken to improve safety in the workplace, there’s always a chance that your employees may get injured from repetitive motion or lifting heavy objects.
On the bright side, automated packaging machines can perform these tasks without putting your employees in harm’s way. They can also be programmed to operate carefully around hazardous materials, thus further reducing the risk of accidents and injuries.
Automation is the Way to Go
Automation has been the buzzword for most businesses across all industries since the turn of the 20th century. By reducing their reliance on human labor and focusing on automated machines that can work for longer and perform better, businesses have realized the numerous benefits of automation when it comes to cost, safety, and quality assurance.
The same notion applies to the packaging industry, which is barred by numerous cases of downtime, high operational costs, and packaging defects.
By leveraging automation, companies in the packaging sector can effectively overcome most of these challenges and maintain a competitive edge over their less-automated competitors.
