If you are not familiar with the commercial packaging industry, you may be wondering what jobs a pallet factory. Some people imagine that pallets are produced in some kind of automated mass production plant where machines do all the work. Could not be farther from the truth.
While full automation is certainly on the horizon for a pallet factory, it still has not arrived. It may seem like a simple thing to automate, but there are several reasons why automation in packaging is a tough nut to crack.
Customers often require a customized solution to solve their packaging problems. While sometimes a standard pallet is sufficient, much more often manufacturers need a pallet that fits the exact specifications of their product.
In many cases, trying to use a standard pallet increases damage in transit and negates any savings a manufacturer can realize by using a standard pallet or even a recycled pallet. That's where a pallet factory that can respond to needs and create custom designs.
Pallet factory: this is how it works
Design engineers analyze what a manufacturer needs to successfully and safely get their product to its final destination. They design a packaging solution and then we put it into production.
Now think about other manufacturing industries that have highly automated production plants. For most other types of manufacturers, one production run is equivalent to millions of identical items. When they change the product, they have to retool and adjust all the automation equipment to produce a different product, a process that can take weeks in some industries. Once this is done, they will produce millions of identical products with the new specifications.
It is a huge effort to remodel a plant to produce a different or modified product. Now imagine trying to do that in the industrial packaging industry.
In a highly automated production plant, all equipment would have to be adjusted and retooled for each customer's product. On top of that, manufacturers generally don't buy millions of pallets or boxes at a time. They buy them all year round as they make and ship their own products.
Those two factors combined mean that wood packaging manufacturers, using that type of technology, would be retrofitting automation systems and reprogramming robotics multiple times a day.
