For the third day in a row, you aren’t able to operate your line because there isn’t enough workforce to fill the jobs to be done. It’s another day of lost production, lost profits, and disappointment that the ever-growing demand for your products will impact consumers worldwide.
Unfortunately, this has become the common scene for many companies in the packaging industry. These companies are reaching out to partner with Morrison as operation teams are becoming more willing to turn to automation for key areas of their production.
Automation in packaging lines is a hot topic in manufacturing again for a variety of reasons beyond workforce demands. Packaging Equipment Manufacturers are constantly discussing the many benefits that can come from deciding to automate specific areas of your line. Here are 5 ways automation can impact your business now.
Truth #1: Automation Reduces the Need for Hard-to-Fill Jobs
A common misconception is automation completely eliminates the need for workforce on your line, but this simply isn’t the case. Instead, automation can help reduce the need for the hardest-to-fill jobs on your line while you compete with rising minimum wages.
Automating simple tasks like combining of lanes, dividing of lanes, or inverting containers are cost-effective solutions that can have an immediate impact on your workforce needs.
See a wide variety of automated container handling applications that can help your line in these videos.
Truth #2: Automation Helps You Repurpose Current Workforce to Other Open Areas
In tandem with tip #1, when you automate certain areas of your line that are staffed, you can repurpose this staff to the other areas on the line or train for different roles that are more intriguing and engaging allowing for greater employee retention. It allows you to utilize the team you have in new ways and grow them with the future of the business.
The Society for Human Resource Management says it costs on average about $4,000 dollars and more than 40 days to hire a new employee. When you restructure your workforce to other areas, you are saving this and keeping employees that fit your core values.
Truth #3: Automation Can Reduce Human Error
Humans naturally make mistakes, machines do the perform the same task, over and over again, allowing for more consistency and less error to occur. Machines are simply more predictable than the human eye. Plus, when properly maintained, machinery doesn’t have to take sick days. It performs the task consistently, on-time, and keeps your production moving forward.
Truth #4: Automation Can Increase Production Speeds
Automation is often only limited by the speed of the equipment upstream and downstream of the machine you’re implementing on your line. This means, you can usually increase production by increasing throughput or reducing cumbersome transition areas of container handling when they no longer are performed through non-automated techniques.
Additionally, automation of container handling brings increased positive control on your container. Issues such as misplaced labels or false rejects due to poor container handling can slow down production speeds and increase wasted product, but timing screw-controlled automation can reduce this and increase your production speed capabilities.
Truth #5: Automation Provides a Better Return on Investment
Often, automation can help customers see ROI within a couple weeks or months of installation. To get a better understanding of the ROI for the specific application you would like to automation, ask your Original Equipment Manufacturer.
For more information on how automation of container handling can improve your production and reduce your workforce constraints, head over to this page here.