3M was formerly known as the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company and the company itself has been around since 1902.  Founded in a Lake Superior town in Minnesota, 5 businessmen founded a company to mine mineral for grinding wheel abrasives.  While the sandpaper business didn’t exactly kick off, the company encouraged all it’s employees to innovate on their own and then bring their ideas to the table.  In 1925, a young lab assistant, Richard Drew, invented masking tape which was the catalyst to all of 3M’s future success.

As part of our efforts to help preserve this beautiful earth, we’d like to help you keep your work environment as green as possible! And no… we don’t mean repainting the office.  Our Eco Friendly  line consists of over 70 products that are proven to work, priced competitively, and most importantly, safe for people and the environment!

Check out things like:

• Green cleaning supplies
• Eco Friendly bio loosefill
• Green sorbent re-form
• Eco Friendly paper dunnage
• Green consulting services
• Green products from Pregis and Intertape
• And More!

Learn how you can start helping out mother earth HERE!

Giving your hands a much needed break could be as simple as using stretch wrapping over hand wrapping.  Besides the endless thanks your hands will be giving you, there are numerous other benefits to choosing stretch wrapping as well.  Let’s explore them:

1.) Consistent and uniform application

An operator who wraps pallets with hand wrap stretch film is not able to wrap every load exactly the same way, time and time again. A load wrapped by one operator Monday morning will not be wrapped the same way as another operator on Friday afternoon.Pallet wrapping with a stretch wrap machine eliminates this issue.

2.) Professional Package

Wrapping a pallet using a stretch wrap machine produces a clean professional finished product. Pallet wrapping with hand wrap leaves a rather erratic and uneven look. The look of your pallet load on your customer’s floor must project the professional image you want for your company. Pallet wrapping with a stretch wrap machine eliminates this issue.

3.) Training

There is a right way and a wrong way to wrap a pallet with hand wrap. Applied incorrectly, hand wrap may crush the product or allow the product to shift during transport. Employee turnover or multiple operators mean that you must continually train employees on how to correctly wrap the loads to ensure customer satisfaction while ensuring they do not injure themselves. Pallet wrapping with a stretch wrap machine eliminates this issue

4.) Employee Safety

Hand wrapping pallets is an extremely difficult job if it is done correctly, and a common source of employee back injuries when performed incorrectly. The human form is not designed to walk hunched over manipulating an 8-10 lbs weight while also trying to pull enough tension into the film to hold the pallet load together. Then 20 seconds later you are holding the same roll of stretch film above your head to do the top of the pallet, again tugging on the film using only your back and arm muscles. Many accidents and work related injuries are caused by hand wrapping pallets. Review OSHA (Occupational Safety & Health Administration) stretch wrapping guidelines before making your pallet wrapping decision. Pallet wrapping with a stretch wrap machine eliminates this issue.

5.) Load Integrity

No one likes hand wrapping. At some point the “good enough” syndrome takes over. Knowing what is required to keep your product unitized during shipping, and while it is on your customer’s floor, is essential in setting your stretch wrapping specifications for your operator’s to follow. When an employee is hand wrapping pallets the responsibility of meeting minimum tension requirements is left up to him. Fatigue, ignorance, training, or lack of motivation can affect the employee’s “good enough” point resulting in potential complaints or damage due to poorly wrapped product.Pallet wrapping with a stretch wrap machine eliminates this issue.

6.) Damage Control

As employees deal with the difficulty of hand wrapping the goal becomes just wrapping it enough to get it out the door. Wrapping the load to eliminate damage during transit and at your customer’s warehouse becomes secondary. Pallet wrapping with a stretch wrap machine eliminates this issue as it wraps the same way every time reducing the potential of a pallet being damaged during transit.

7.) Customer Satisfaction

Pallet wrapping your product is the LAST operation you perform and the FIRST operation your customer sees of your capabilities as a supplier. Your customer’s perception of your competence as a supplier starts the minute your pallet of product arrives at his dock. Inconsistently hand wrapped pallets can give the perception of a low-end manufacturer. Lowering your standards of production during this last operation can be costly. Pallet wrapping with a stretch wrap machine eliminates this issue.

8.) Film Savings

Although the key to stretch wrapping is to make sure that we get the product to the customer intact, we all want to do it for the least amount of cost. With the machine set to wrap the loads with the least amount of stretch film required to hold the load together, you eliminate unnecessary extra revolutions of film being applied by well meaning operators. At a point, more film does not hold the load better, it is just waste. Pallet wrapping with a stretch wrap machine eliminates this issue.

9.) Damaged Hand Wrap Rolls

An expensive hidden cost of hand wrapping is the cost of all the rolls of stretch film that are thrown away because they have been nicked or damaged when thrown to the ground or left lying around. This cost can sometimes be as much as 15-20% of your hand wrap costs. Pallet wrapping with a stretch wrap machine eliminates this issue.

10.) Quality Control

By definition, hand wrapping a pallet manually prevents you from obtaining any type of repeatability. Multiple operators, time of day, fatigue and many other variables prevents any type of QC standards. Pallet wrapping with a stretch wrap machine allows you to either eliminate, or preset these variables. This ensures repeatability, allowing loads to be wrapped to a set quality standard. Pallet wrapping with a stretch wrap machine eliminates this issue.

Read more about Pregis’ app here: http://www.pregis.com/Portals/0/docs/NewsReleases/4.25.2012%20Pregis%20develops%20protective%20packaging%20app.pdf

The AIRmove (shown above) takes a 13 lb. roll of film and tranforms it into packaging magic with the press of a button.  Thousands of compartments within the film are filled with air to create  a product that provides both protection and padding.  Whether large, fragile, or heavy, any product can be packed, quickly and safely, with AIRmove.

Save time, space, money, and your nerves.

Check out www.my-packness.com to see and learn more about what AIRmove can do for you, and your bottom line.

Discover this year’s most innovative solutions for:

Increasing package security,

Boosting productivity,

Increasing Sustainability,

Saving time,

Cutting costs,

Increasing employee safety.

Registered attendees will have the chance to win flat screen TV’s, iPads, gift cards and more from our daily raffles so register today at www.hughesent.com/register

The BEL 5150u differs from the WFPS 5150 by being an off-the-shelf unitized machine – providing a more compact frame, a simplified case size range, and a competitive price. Its electro-pneumatic forming mechanism handles various challenges associated with recycled corrugated cases. TheBEL 5150u is also equipped with an energy reducing Power Save Mode.

Do you have a problem keeping an empty, unsealed carton from tipping over on your conveyor line? Are you hand taping them before placing them on the conveyor on their way to the packing station or case sealer just for this reason? Well try this simple and efficient step. After squaring the carton, turn it upside down. Then push the minor bottom flaps down as far as they will go on the inside of the carton. Then do the same for the bottom major flaps. Turn the carton right side up and place on the conveyor and push down on the majors and minors. The carton will now be flat on the conveyor and will not tip over even it is being conveyed.

-Dan Malament

Want to customize your cartons, but don’t want to pay for plates or you use many different sizes of cartons?

You can custom print gum tape or pressure sensitive tape for as low an order as 1 case each. Custom printed tape makes your product stand out and is a great form of advertising. It has an attractive, professional look and helps promote brand recognition. Printed carton tape is an inexpensive way to get your message to the public while enabling the ease of stock handling and identification.

By Neal Magaziner, Hughes Enterprises

“The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.”
~Warren G. Bennis

Well, not quite. At least, not yet. But, automation is certainly the watchword as today’s manufacturers face razor-thin profit margins, Just-In-Time (JIT) manufacturing and ISO-9002/QS-1000 quality standards. In fact, companies must automate in order to deliver what today’s customer is demanding, when he wants it and at the price he wants to pay.

Let’s start by taking a look at the reasons why manufacturers automate their packaging operations in the first place. Then, we’ll explore some of the tools that help them do it.

Labor – The availability and quality of a reliable talent pool is one of the most important business drivers in any industry. So, management must get the most out of the people they do have. Automation allows companies to reassign human resources to more productive areas such as quality control, customer service or product design. And, while workers are sometimes concerned that machines will “replace” them (not usually true), automated systems can let companies allow employee attrition to take its natural course, without sacrificing productivity.

Throughput Demands – There’s an old saying among plant managers, “Machines don’t take coffee breaks.” Sure, there is downtime such as scheduled maintenance or occasional rebuilds/refurbs, but automated systems can be counted on to produce given amounts of throughput in given amounts of time – every day. And, that means the world to companies who must compete in a world of demanding customers, tight quality standards and JIT inventories.

Consistency – A trained and motivated worker is a prized asset to any company. But, even the best human worker has the occasional “bad day.” And, “bad day” can easily translate into “massive product recall.” Automated systems, properly set-up and maintained, will put the right label in the right place on the right box, every single time.

Real Estate - It’s expensive. Expansion and success is a two-edged blade. Sure, it means more revenue and, hopefully, profits. But, it also means new investment in people, property and equipment. The old manufacturing rule of thumb was that if you increased business 20%, you’d need 20% more people to get the job done. Many times, the growing company finds that it simply can no longer fit more people (or equipment) into the same building. Automation can help avoid an expensive call to the real estate agent.

The demands are complex. Fortunately, there is no shortage of automated packaging tools to meet them. Here are a few that we think add a lot of value – and are within the reach of even moderately sized operations.

Automated Case Sealers/Erectors – A case sealer takes a flat box, forms it, seals the bottom and presents it for loading. This offers three main advantages. First, less people are necessary to perform this menial task. Second, it eliminates an ergonomically undesirable process. And third, it presents each box only moments before it is needed, rather than the alternative – paying for both a laborer to form a shift’s worth of boxes ahead of time and the wasted plant capacity used to store empty boxes.

Automatic Stretch Wrappers – The strength of stretch wrap comes not from the volume used, but from maximizing “material memory” by stretching the wrap to within a few foot-pounds of its breaking strength. Stretch wrappers use exactly the amount needed and wrap to a standard tension, every time. As a rule, any operation that needs to wrap 15 or more pallets each day can see a cost-benefit from automated stretch wrapping systems.

Automatic Strapping/ Unitizing – Many manufacturing and distribution operations can benefit from Automated Strapping Equipment in their UPS shipping operations. These systems pay for themselves on a simple premise. It’s a lot cheaper to ship one 20-pound package than it is to ship four 5-pound packages to the same place. These units automatically gather and strap similar packages going to shared destinations.

A Note On Leasing - With new technologies being introduced all the time, more companies are turning to leasing as a tool to stay ahead of the curve and conserve capital. Monthly or other periodic payments ranging from six to 72 months allow for simplified budgeting, avoiding complicated depreciation schedules. Payments can finance not only the purchase price, but other costs such as freight, installation, training and maintenance support. Many leases also allow equipment upgrades during the lease, as technology advances or as your needs grow.

The decision to automate any process comes down to a combination of quality, safety, ergonomic and cost-benefit analysis. But, while automation was once the bastion of only giant corporations, new systems and designs are attractive to even the smallest operations. So, check it out – your profit margin could depend on it.