May Robots Overcome These 5 Packaging Trade Challenges?

Is your online business affected by these 5 packaging trade challenges?

May robots be the answer that you simply’re in search of?

So much is has been occurring within the packing trade lately. Firms like yours have been hit onerous by a collection of world occasions. Issues do not look prone to get a lot better within the close to future.

Robots are more and more being utilized by corporations throughout varied industries to enhance operations and assist them thrive within the present local weather.

May robotic automation be the fitting answer to your firm?

If that’s the case, what’s one of the simplest ways to deploy a robotic software so that you simply get essentially the most out of it?

5 packing trade challenges that is perhaps affecting you

It will not have escaped your discover that instances are robust proper now for a lot of within the packaging trade.

Maybe your organization was hit onerous in 2020 as a result of Covid-19 pandemic. Maybe you will have been experiencing challenges for a number of years due different pressures from the market.

Or, maybe your organization is doing very properly!

Even when you have not personally skilled as many challenges as others within the trade, you’re most likely very conscious of the potential difficulties you possibly can face if you happen to “took your eye off the ball.”

Listed here are 5 frequent packing trade challenges which can be both already affecting you or may have an effect on you within the close to future:

1. Provide chain issues

A number of main worldwide occasions have upturned the packaging provide chains lately.

The Covid-19 pandemic clearly hit many components of the availability chain onerous. However, different occasions have had equally huge impacts on the packaging trade.

The demand for corrugated packaging surged similtaneously most of the largest paper mills skilled intensive downtime. Excessive climate in Texas impacted the availability of polymers. This hit plastic prices which had been additionally influenced by the blockage within the Suez Canal in March 2021.

As a Wall Avenue Journal article mentioned “All over the place you look, the worldwide provide chain is a large number.”

2. Digitization of packaging workflows

Even earlier than these current occasions, a number of different challenges had been affecting the packaging trade.

For some years, many packaging corporations have been struggling to maintain up with the growing demand for them to digitize their workflows. Prospects more and more count on they’ll be capable of hook into your processes digitally. This requires that you’ve the methods and know-how in place to help the brand new methods of working.

3. Rising demand for merchandise

There’s growing demand for packaging merchandise due to the rise of e-commerce and mail-dependent providers. In keeping with a McKinsey report, some components of the packaging trade are extra affected by this demand than others.

Rising demand is normally a very good factor. Nevertheless, issues come up when you possibly can’t sustain with the elevated manufacturing necessities.

4. Value pressures

Together with rising product demand, persons are additionally turning into extra demanding about their packaging wants.

Prospects need higher-quality packing, sooner, and with extra customization choices. Additionally they need all of that on the similar worth as they’re paying now… if not cheaper. If your organization cannot sustain with these wants, you’ll seemingly lose out to rivals.

5. Staffing difficulties

If issues weren’t difficult sufficient for packaging corporations, the trade has additionally skilled varied staffing points recently.

Potential new hires generally consider the packaging trade as “much less attention-grabbing” than different industries. Consequently, it may be onerous to draw new folks to the trade. As many employees from older generations are retiring, this makes it more and more troublesome to search out good individuals who perceive the trade.

1. They’re relevant to many duties within the provide chain together with packing, sorting, and palletizing. This makes them a very good long-term funding as a robotic can simply be redeployed if a particular process is not wanted. We have written earlier than how robots can enhance provide chain issues.
2. As a digital know-how, robots can match seamlessly into the brand new digital methods. As a result of robots are straightforward to program and redeploy, they’ll adapt to the fast modifications that usually accompany digital operations.
3. Because of their potential for 24-hour operation, robots can enhance the productiveness of your facility. This lets you sustain with rising demand in a approach that’s extra scalable than counting on outsourcing or hiring.
4. Robots even have the potential to scale back the unit value of your merchandise whereas concurrently growing high quality consistency.
5. Including robots to your operations permits you to get essentially the most out of your folks with out having to rent many further employees. This may also help enormously if you’re discovering it onerous to search out new hires.

Robotic palletizing: An incredible first software for packaging corporations

What process do you have to automate first with a robotic?

Within the packaging trade, a significant bottleneck is commonly the palletizing course of.

Palletizing is a boring process for folks to do and may typically trigger damage as a result of repetitive nature of the duty. This makes it an ideal job for a robotic!

You may get a palletizing robotic up and working as shortly as attainable by utilizing a collaborative robotic software package. This supplies all the gear you could carry out palletizing with a robotic.

Discover out extra about our palletizing package on our product web page.

What challenges has your online business overcome lately? Inform us within the feedback under or be part of the dialogue on LinkedIn, Twitter, Fb, or the DoF skilled robotics group.