Attending a fair is the best opportunity to meet customers and dealers, learn about problems, see what’s new.
Normally during the fairs we entertain ourselves with many people and met many different realities. There are always a lot of requests arriving at the fair and often one of the common “problems” of our customers is the manual wrapping of product pallets.
If manually wrapping may seem like a saving at first sight … sorry, we must disappoint you.
Sure, you can do a good job. You do not have to use a forklift to carry the pallet to a machine. So why spend money if it’s not necessary?
But have you really considered all the details of this type of work?
Hidden cost n.1: damaged products are expensive
Human beings are not machines. Anyone who wraps your pallets manually will never be able to do the job exactly the same every time.
A pallet wrapped by one operator on Monday morning cannot be wrapped in the same way by another operator on Friday afternoon.
Thus manual wrapping will not be able to give you consistent and uniform applications over time.
This could lead to unsafe loads, resulting in possible damage to your products.
And while we’re on this topic: did you know that if the stretch film is actually stretched it becomes more resistant to tearing and puncturing? The extension makes the material more resistant and also increases its efficiency in containing and stabilizing the products on pallets.
Manual wrapping will never give a result even remotely similar to what can be obtained from a machine.
Hidden cost n.2: work has a price
Wrapping a pallet manually is necessarily a much more intense job than what you will have to do by entrusting it to a machine.
When you pay for the work of your employees, is manual wrapping the best use of the time spent?
What are the other jobs that your operators could carry out while a machine takes care of wrapping?
Would you need the same number of employees?
Hidden cost n.3: Health & Safety
Hand wrapping requires a lot of bending, twisting and pulling by the operator to ensure that the entire pallet is completely wrapped. Repetitive activities can cause fatigue and injury.
Injuries mean injuries and consequently absences from work.
Hidden cost n. 4: have you considered the material?
Did you know that modern wrapping machines can easily stretch the film by 250% before applying it to the pallet and with appropriate precautions even up to over 400%?
When you compare this with an elongation of 10-50% obtainable with manual wrapping, we can realize how much you can save on the cost of the material. By hand wrapping you are probably using significantly more film than needed.
And how many rolls of stretch film do you throw away because they got nicked or damaged when thrown on the ground or left lying around? This cost can sometimes reach up to 15-20% of the cost of the hand wrap.
Hidden cost n.5: productivity
Manual packaging takes a long time. A stretch film machine is generally much faster than an operator, increasing overall throughput (and consistency of operation and optimal use of the material). With manual wrapping you are not working as fast as possible, which is a cost.
Hidden cost n. 6: what does the customer perceive?
Wrapping a pallet with a stretch film machine produces a clean and uniform finished product. Pallet packing by hand can cause uneven and messy pallets (not to mention the potential damaged product). The appearance of the pallet load from the customer affects the image of your company. Hand wrapping could give your business a low-end look. Loss of credibility.
Global costs: did you think about the sea?
Every day we are bombarded with distressing images that show us the sea of plastic that engulfs us. Plastic is everywhere, plastic is used to produce and to protect everything. The planet is undoubtedly suffering and we are all called to do something.
We produce machines that use plastic, but we also want to be attentive to what is happening in the world and to the ecological innovations of the sector.
Protecting products on pallets by wrapping them with stretch film is undoubtedly a pollution that can be reduced by using devices that are able to minimize the use of plastic.
Less film = Less plastic = Less emissions = LESS POLLUTION.
In this article we have highlighted a number of points against manual wrapping and in the end, but not least, we want to highlight that it is a decidedly anti-ecological method.
Saving money and doing something for our planet is a nice solution, isn’t it?
