The next thing we need to do is decode the term for stretched packaging – automatic and semi-automatic.
A lot of things have been proven — do you know what might happen to finding the right way to solve your material handling challenges? It opens the way to search and use common terminology in the industry. These terms may not be intuitive and are the hardest part.
It’s a conversation like this, which is one of my colleague’s recent conversations with a small business owner, whether he needs to shrink the packaging or stretch the packaging is something we’re not sure about. (it turns out he needs the latter with the proper container mono-component pallet loading), from the buyer field investigation is what we often do. What we want to know is whether they need semi-automatic full-automatic stretching packaging.
Providing some background information is the purpose of this article, and it’s helpful for you to focus on your initial research.
Let’s take a look at different degrees of automation.
Do you know where your confusion comes from? It sometimes comes from the context. For example, the thing the company is considering is their first elastic wrapper. We can understand that. Think of it as a simple semi-automatic wrapper for “automatic”. After all, it’s still dangerous to go around on a tray, compared to laborious, unpleasant and sometimes dangerous tasks.
On the other side of the spectrum, otherwise “lights out factory”, it has a material handling process, a forklift driver is needed, and this forklift driver needs to pick up the load and pull out of the package. Compared with other operations, one might think that the operation is semi-automatic.
We can make a simple definition.