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CUSTOM ENGINEERING & INTEGRATED SYSTEMS SUCCESS STORIES
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| Modified Bagger and Imprinter Improves Productivity by 400% |
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A newspaper publisher was hand bagging their newspapers into individual bags to use for rural paper delivery and out of town mailings. They were being overwhelmed by the labor necessary to bag the newspapers in the short timeframe required for a daily publication. Automated Packaging Systems’ Custom Engineering & Integration Team worked with the customer to design a OneStep™ bagger for horizontal hand loading that was modified to improve ease of loading and ergonomics for their specific application. We also provided custom integration services so that our Autobag inline printer worked with the customer’s database software to print unique, personalized data directly onto each bag. This custom engineered packaging solution improved the productivity of each individual operator by 400 percent. Back to top… |
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| Custom Bag Design and Printing Eliminates Waste and Saves Money |
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The customer of a manufacturer of emergency oxygen masks had a problem with waste in the field. When Emergency Medical Technicians and Emergency Room Personnel needed an oxygen mask for a patient, they had to guess which size would properly fit the patient’s face. This led to bags of masks being opened and discarded when they were not the proper fit. Automated Packaging Systems’ Custom Engineering & Integration Team worked with the manufacturer to design a unique bag |
| that had a graduated sizing method built into the bag itself. That way, the technician could determine the proper size needed and choose determine and choose the proper size before opening the bag. This innovative bag design and printing solution eliminated the waste, as well as improved medical response time. Back to top… |
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| Custom Engineered System Triples Operator Productivity |
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An industrial uniform company needed to reduce labor costs for their process of cleaning and redelivering shop towels to their customers. Their existing process consisted of folding, counting, stacking and bundling towels for delivery to their customers. Automated Packaging Systems’ Custom Engineering & Integration Team developed a completely new packaging system for automatically counting and bagging rewashed towels into packages of 25 or 50 towels per bag. The system provided improvements in speed that more than tripled operator productivity. Back to top… |
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| Custom Accumulating Funnel Stacks and Bags Cutlery at 45 Bags Per Minute |
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The challenge presented to Automated Packaging Systems’ Custom Engineering and Integration Team was fairly straightforward. The customer wanted to place nested plastic cutlery in a bag at 45 bags per minute without the product de-nesting. Additionally, the system had to be adaptable to multiple bag and product sizes. Finally, due to the location in the facility where they wanted to package product, the footprint of the machine had to be quite small.
The engineers at Automated Packaging selected the HS-100 Excel® as the bagger platform they would build the system around. This bagger was selected for its compact size and the bagging speeds it could achieve. Next, the engineers designed a sliding accumulating funnel, which allowed the product to enter the bag nested, and as the funnel was extracted from the bag, the product remained nested. Finally, the system was equipped with a bag-in-a-box attachment. Providing bags in a box allows for longer run times between material changeovers.
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The small footprint of the system allows the operator to bag product right off the injection molder, saving material handling time and labor. The operator de-gates the product and drops the bundle on the slide funnel scoop. The system detects the product and cycles the cutlery into a bag. The bagger seals the bag and presents a new bag to be loaded. Achieving bagging speeds of 45 bags per minute allows the operator to stay ahead of the injection molder.
“The application presented some unique challenges to our team,” said Gregg Mertens, manager of the Custom Engineering and Integration group. “Particularly, the need for flexibility to adjust to multiple sizes and counts.” Mertens went on to explain, “We knew we had something when we started testing the accumulating slide funnel, as it allowed us to quickly change over product sizes and counts.” The device was so successful that Automated Packaging was able to patent the design.
“The bottom line...” says Mertens, “...the customer had some stringent requirements necessary to justify the system, we designed to those requirements, and that’s what we do best.” Back to top…
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| Return to Custom Engineering Overview |
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