Finding Flexibility in the Packaging Department

For manufacturers looking to save labor, improve consistency or increase the speed of their packaging department, automation can be an obvious choice. However, those who want to automate while maintaining flexibility will find that the two are often at odds.

“Companies are trying to do more with less. Not just operators, but machines that can easily change and easily handle different configurations,” said Dennis Gunnell, president of Formost Fuji. “When you link that to automation, the two are on a crash course.”

This difficulty is especially felt in packaging departments that sell a greater variety of products on the same line.

“The big guys have the advantage of being able to dedicate a line to a product or a family of products,” Gunnell explained. “It’s really difficult when you’re a medium or small baker and you need that flexibility.”

For these operations, investing in the right semiautomatic solution rather than full automation is often a good compromise, noted Bill Kehrli, vice president of sales and marketing at Cavanna Packaging. He shared an example of a customer who automated primary packaging but left secondary packaging manual to remain flexible and accommodate all of their different package and box sizes.

“They had so many different changes that it didn’t make sense to automate because the time it takes to make a change and the area of ​​expertise required to make that change outweighs the benefits of automation,” he explained.

Kehrli emphasized that bakery and snack producers should really consider their reasons for automating before investing in it.

“A lot of people bought automation and do it a little naively; Maybe the salesperson went out there and sold them the dream of full automation and they believed it,” he said. “And really a suitable partner would have said, ‘Why do you want to automate? Are you aware of the cost of automation, not necessarily the capital expenditure, but the human cost of automation, and what that can bring to your production?’ Short runs typically do not lend themselves to automation. And sometimes, if you buy full automation and want quick changeovers and short runs, you’re going to be very unhappy.”

It’s important for bakers and snack producers to clearly define the automation project and what its goals are, Gunnell said.

“You need to set some parameters around this,” he said. “And then the next side of that, let’s say, ‘Maybe we create these products that we can automate, but then we leave the ability to do other things manually or semi-automatically.’ ”

Formost Fuji recently completed an automated packaging line with an open section where its customers can manually feed products that have not yet been automated or are yet to be developed.

“We’re incorporating this now so that in the future, if they have new products, they can handle them manually,” Gunnell said. “Taking that forethought now can make a big difference.”

Hunter Schultheis, North Central sales manager, BluePrint Automation, noted that manufacturers should take an incremental approach to automation.

“Automate a process with the future ability to add more,” he said.

For faster, more flexible changeovers, Delkor has updated its case packers to allow producers to switch between any shipper style in 10 minutes or less.

“There has been a huge increase in the use of retail-ready packaging by most mass merchants over the past five years,” said Dale Anderson, president and CEO of Delkor Systems. “As a result, the requirements of a packaging line have changed substantially. These days, a packaging line needs to change quickly to whatever shipper style the mass marketer needs.”

AMF Bakery System’s 75S Bread Slicer Bagger Combo features an optional half-loaf divider that allows bakers to easily switch between product sizes. Martin Dalbec, product group leader for AMF PackTech, an AMF Bakery Systems brand, noted that the machine is designed for faster production changeovers.

“Recipe-driven technology with automatic pre-operational guides, blade spacing, feed phaser, bag tension and spoon centering and opening adjustments ensure perfect adaptation to production needs and significantly reduces operator involvement and errors” , he said.

This article is an excerpt from the October 2024 issue of Baking & Snack. To read the full article on Packaging Innovation, Click here.