Auger manufacturer speeds pallet wrapping by 80% with automated orbital wrapper

Situation

Falcon Industries, located in Medina, Ohio, is a supplier of custom augers and auger flighting in medium-run production quantities. Using a variety of materials, the manufacturer makes conveyor and mixing screws, ribbon flighting, and various other helicoid and sectional flighting to customers’ specifications for companies worldwide.

To wrap pallet loads for delivery, workers needed to snake metal and/or plastic banding and strapping around and under the pallet at floor level, tighten it around the product with a tensioner, then fasten it with a crimper—often several times per pallet—to keep the auger in place. They then applied stretch wrap with the pallet load suspended from a forklift. This manual system was slow and cumbersome, and the company soon started looking for a better method.

Resolution

Falcon Industries replaced its manual stretch-wrapping method with the automated TAB Wrapper Tornado orbital wrapping machine from TAB Industries LLC and saw a major improvement on the first use.

“We did a time study of the manual process and intended to do a comparison with the TAB Wrapper, but after wrapping the first pallet load, the speed difference was so obvious that we didn't bother,” said Steve Sogor, general manager for Falcon.

Wrapping an average of 20 pallet loads per day, the orbital stretch wrapper secures the heavy, oddly shaped spiral helical flighting to its pallet in one minute or less versus the five minutes or more required when stretch wrapping by hand—an 80% reduction in time. The company is saving nearly 450 hours each year in the packaging department while improving the efficiency of its labor force and strengthening the quality of its pallet wrap.

The stretch wrapper features patent-pending technology that wraps plastic film 360 degrees around and under the pallet and its load while raised on a forklift to create a strong, unitized load able to keep the round metal augers in place without shifting in transit or storage. Fitted with the optional wireless automation package, the stretch-wrap machine allows a single worker to manage the process from a forklift without touching the pallet, the augers, or the machine while in operation and without leaving the seat. Banding, strapping, and the tensioning process are eliminated.

“We're getting an extremely secure wrap now, every time, with a lot less effort,” said Sogor. “We're getting more done much faster.”