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Editor's Note: Take a look at our featured best practice, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) | Supply Chain Functions (113-slide PowerPoint presentation). This document provides a collection of 100+ Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) related to the Supply Chain functions listed further below. Keeping in mind that each organization is different, the enclosed KPIs are intended as a general reference and their relevance depends on the specific [read more]
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The term palletization means putting and packaging products on pallets. The latter is always of a pre-determined size and layout. This process appeared at the beginning of the 20th century and became more widespread during World War II. It was the best way to store goods in a warehouse and transport them between companies or even countries.
Back then, palletizing was all about manual labor, as people had to lift extremely heavy weights. It wasn’t really effective but had its advantages since other transporting methods for large batches didn’t exist. Years have passed bringing modern palletizing systems automated nature. Let’s dig deeper to see what advantages and disadvantages modern palletizing brings to manufacturing and packaging.
Palletizing used to be a dangerous and maiming process, as people had to do it with their hands. Today’s factories strive to apply different palletizing solutions, implementing automated robots being one of them. These are the upsides robotics offers you in this sphere today:
This isn’t the final list, as automation is always forging ahead coming up with new options to choose from and upgrading the old ones.
Purchasing and installing an automated palletizer seems to cost a fortune. However, your enterprise replaces a human operator with an AI-powered machine that rarely needs any pauses. The latter needs neither a lunch break nor holidays. You will also cut corners on a salary and sick leaves that cost a lot to your company’s budget. The initial high-cost installation is nothing compared to all these downtimes and must-paid benefits.
Manual labor becomes less payable therefore hiring a person who’s ready to perform recurring tasks is a rare phenomenon. Even if you recruit someone, they’re likely to quit soon leaving your factory to wait for another worker. Implementing a robot to do this action instead of a human operator is a wise and far-sighted decision.
The most significant downside is hiring a costly programmer to change palletizing robots’ settings. It’s necessary when a product size or production process changes. This was a huge problem until recent years, as an unavoidable downtime would occur due to compulsory reprogramming. Still, this is an inevitable thing if you wish your machine not to become redundant and useless.
Despite being a valuable investment, a palletizing machine isn’t always a necessity if your factory isn’t large enough. It may not bring the benefits and profit you expect, as its initial cost won’t be covered with what you make out of it. If you’re still ready to bring changes to your enterprise, RIOS Company is here for you to help.
By installing our VULCAN robot, one can forget about hiring manual workers to sort items, pack them up, and palletize them. All that is done by a single AI-powered machine that needs no human intervention and brings a man-made factor to zero. It’s also easy to reprogram in case any changes are amended and doesn’t require much time and effort for that.
You can download in-depth presentations on Warehouse Management and 100s of management topics from the FlevyPro Library. FlevyPro is trusted and utilized by 1000s of management consultants and corporate executives.
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