As an account manager of a cardboard supplier, you want to reach your company’s sales targets, develop long-term relationships with your customers and identify new business opportunities. To do this optimally, you are dependent on the developments in the retail supply chain. You need to keep an eye on it to help your customers with their challenges. At this moment, a lot is changing in the supply chain that is solely focused on cutting costs.
For example, retailers want to sell their products for low prices to the consumer market. To do so, retailers force food suppliers to deliver their products in trays that meet predefined standards. Why? Standardised tray types greatly improve logistics efficiency and drive significant cost reduction because trucks are filled to maximum capacity. If food suppliers provide different tray types, retailers can’t stack trays optimally, which results in higher costs.
A solution to meet retailers’ and food suppliers’ packaging requirements and to reach your goals is tray forming machine. Automatic tray forming is the forming of cardboard trays with cardboard packaging machinery. It is a technique to produce trays that are strong, stackable and minimal in size.
The pros of automatic tray forming
1. Better tray quality
Cardboard trays formed with tray forming machines are stronger than hand folded trays because they are glued with hotmelt. This process makes the trays better stackable. They can be stacked in trucks without collapsing, which could happen to hand folded trays if they are stacked too high.
2.Reduced material costs
Tray forming machine (with a gluing process) often reduces the investment in cardboard because less m² cardboard is required to form the same tray, compared to a hand forming process. However, in some situations more m² is required. This is the case with the production of punnets, for example.
3. Reduced labour costs
When hand folding is used to form boxes, one has workers in place to do the manual labour. This capacity comes with salary costs and the need for working space. One or more tray forming machines can be controlled by a single operator. This results in fewer employees on
the payroll and reduced labour costs.
the payroll and reduced labour costs.
4. Stability
Manual labour doesn’t only result in higher (labour) costs, the frequency of errors increases too: humans aren’t perfect. Neither are machines, but the efficiency of a production process does increase significantly with automation. With automatic tray forming, under 0,5% of cardboard wastage can be achieved.
5. Saved space
Another thing a hand folding process requires is working space. Workers need folding tables for forming. The majority of that space becomes available when all you have in place is a tray forming machine. This saved space gives you the opportunity to store more planos.
6. Flexibility
As a cardboard packaging supplier, you do not exclusively work with food suppliers and retailers; you also serve other customers. Therefore, it is crucial to be flexible in production. Your organisation needs to be able to form different tray types and sizes quickly. Good tray forming machines can meet this need because they have short changeover times.
7. Scalability
You or your customers do not constantly produce the same volume: peaks in the production process arise from time to time. Automation helps suppliers cope with high volume deliveries since a machine is always on. With a machine, you only need one or two extra operators to switch shifts. With hand folding, you would have to replace an entire team or workers.
The cons of automatic tray forming
Tray forming machines do not solely come with advantages. There are two things that aren’t in favor of automatic tray forming, compared to hand folding.
1. Investment
Tray forming machines require an investment. But when a certain volume is reached — about 200.000–250.000 trays per year — the investment becomes justifiable. Better yet: in most cases, it becomes profitable. Suppliers can predict their annual volume by looking at their production capacity and the needs of their customers.
2. Technical knowledge
Tray forming machines require proper setup and maintenance, especially during downtime. Technical knowledge is required to do periodical maintenance checks, replace parts, or fix machinery issues. You probably don’t have this knowledge within your organisation, so you need an expert to help you out.
In short, the alternative to hand folding — automatic tray forming — has more pros than cons. This technique improves the quality of trays, significantly reduces costs, and provides more flexibility.
With automatic tray forming, cardboard packaging suppliers can help food suppliers to overcome their challenge. Especially when you are a cardboard supplier that is fully aware of industry developments, and that has the capacity to adapt quickly. But there’s more: automatic tray forming can also help cardboard packaging suppliers grow their business. Curious to know how? Contact With us...
İnfo@osmancubuk.com
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