Mistakes To Avoid When Using a Stretch Wrap Machine

A stretch wrap machine is a valuable asset for your secondary packaging line, but its full potential remains unrealized unless you use it effectively. Whether it’s selecting the right type of stretch wrapper or implementing small operational tweaks to enhance efficiency, there’s much to consider in optimizing your stretch wrapper and overall workflow.

Luckily, many common issues faced by warehouses with stretch wrapping are easily avoidable. Learn about a few mistakes to steer clear of when utilizing a stretch wrap machine in your secondary packaging line so you can maximize your operational efficiency.

Wasting Money on Stretch Film

There are numerous ways to enhance the cost-effectiveness of your stretch film. However, the most efficient approach is to employ pre-stretch technology.

Automatic and semi-automatic stretch wrapper machines surpass manual methods in achieving optimal pre-stretch levels. Consequently, the film tightly secures around the pallet load, leading to substantial savings on material costs for warehouses. Incorporating multi-level variable pre-stretch, can yield savings ranging from 30 to 55 percent in film cost and usage. Ensuring your stretch wrap machine utilizes stretch film efficiently is crucial to avoid material waste and costly errors.

Not Optimizing Wrap Settings

It’s crucial to carefully adjust wrap settings for each product load to ensure the ideal amount of containment force is applied consistently. Failing to optimize these settings results in inefficient stretch film usage and unstable loads, posing risks to products, employees, and customers.

Unitedracksolutions provides advanced control, flexibility, and efficiency in wrapping product loads. With features such as multi-level variable pre-stretch and containment force, proactive corner compensation, and strategic film placement, you can customize your stretch wrapper to divide a load into nine distinct layers, each with its own wrap speed, strength, and placement. This level of customization grants complete control over the wrapping process, ensuring a stable load with precisely the right amount of film and containment force throughout.

Not Maximizing Efficiency for Drivers and Operators

Automation is key to streamlining your workflow, but it’s essential to integrate it correctly to reap its benefits. Without the appropriate steps and features, you won’t achieve maximum efficiency with your stretch wrapper.

Consider your forklift drivers and machine operators, for instance. Do your drivers have to leave their forklifts to start the stretch wrap machine? Do machine operators need to spend time attaching or cutting film at the beginning and end of the wrap cycle? While these tasks may seem minor, they accumulate over time, resulting in significant time and energy wastage that could be better spent on more critical tasks.

Choosing a semi-automatic or automatic stretch wrapper with an automatic cut and clamping device can save time. This eliminates the need for operators to attach film at the start of the cycle and cut it at the end. Such small improvements can make a significant difference in maximizing efficiency and streamlining your workflow.

Not Weighing Loads Before Shipment

Weighing your product loads before shipping is essential for organization and to prevent discrepancies and incidents during the shipment process. When you weigh product loads internally, you can cross-check shipping costs to ensure you’re not overpaying for transportation. Additionally, maintaining comprehensive records of pallet weights helps monitor for theft or other losses within the supply chain.

Although weighing product loads is crucial, incorporating an additional step into your packaging process can be laborious and time-consuming. That’s why many warehouses opt for turntable stretch wrappers equipped with an under-the-turntable scale package, consolidating these tasks and enhancing efficiency in the packaging line.

Creating Unstable Pallets With Improper Wrapping

An essential wrapping technique is roping, which involves using film to secure the product load to the pallet, preventing tipping, swaying, and other accidents during transit. To ensure your loads remain on the pallet, opt for a stretch wrapper equipped with a roping device.

The roper drives the film down the pallet into a cable located beneath the forks of a forklift that lift it. This cable remains intact, eliminating concerns about losing containment force at the pallet’s base. Roping effectively locks the load onto the pallet, guaranteeing the security of your products as they traverse your warehouse and the wider supply chain.

Hindering Flexibility in Your Workflow

Do bottlenecks pose significant challenges in your warehouse operations? One effective method to mitigate them is by investing in portable stretch wrappers, enabling pallet wrapping at any location within your facility. With portable stretch wrappers, you can bring the wrapping machine directly to the pallet, enhancing flexibility and enabling the eradication of bottlenecks in your workflow.