For manufacturers wishing to save labor, improve consistency or bolster the speed of their packaging department, automation can be a no-brainer. However, those wishing to automate while maintaining flexibility will find the two are often at odds.

“Companies are trying to do more with less. Not just operators, but machinery that can easily change over and that can easily handle different configurations,” said Dennis Gunnell, president of Formost Fuji. “When you tie that into automation, the two are on a crash course.”

This difficulty is felt especially in the packaging departments that run a wider variety of products on the same line. 

“The big guys have the advantage that they can dedicate a line to one product or a family of products,” Gunnell explained. “It really is tough when you’re a baker that is medium or smaller, and you need that flexibility.”

For these operations, investing in the right semi-automated solution rather than full automation is often a good compromise, observed Bill Kehrli, vice president of sales and marketing, Cavanna Packaging. He shared the example of a customer that automated primary packaging but left secondary packaging manual to remain flexible and accommodate all its different pack and case sizes. 

“They had so many different changeovers that it didn’t make sense to automate because the time it takes to do a changeover and the area of expertise it takes to do that much of a changeover outweighs the benefits of automation,” he explained.

Kehrli stressed baking and snack producers should really consider their reasons for automating before investing in it.

“A lot of people have purchased automation, and they go into it a little bit naïvely; maybe the salesperson has gone in there and sold them a dream of full automation and they buy into it,” he said. “And really an appropriate partner would have said, ‘Why do you want to automate? Are you aware of the cost of automation, not necessarily the capital outlay, but the human cost of automation, and what that can do to your production?’ Short runs typically don’t lend themselves to automation. And sometimes, if you buy full automation and you want quick changeovers and short runs, you’re going to be very unhappy.”

It’s important bakers and snack producers clearly define the automation project and what their goals are, Gunnell said. 

“You’ve got to put some parameters around it,” he said. “And then the next side of it, say, ‘Maybe we create these products we can automate, but then we leave the ability to do other things manually or semi-automatically.’ ”

Formost Fuji recently completed an automated packaging line with an open section where its customers can manually infeed products that aren’t yet automated or are yet to be developed. 

“We’re building that into it now, so that in the future, if they have new products, they can handle them manually,” Gunnell said. “Giving that forethought now can make a big difference.”

Hunter Schultheis, North Central sales manager, BluePrint Automation, noted that manufacturers should take an incremental approach to automation.

“Automate one process with the future capability of adding more,” he said.

For quicker, more flexible changeovers, Delkor updated its case packers to allow producers to switch between any shipper style in 10 minutes or less. 

“There has been a huge increase in the use of retail-ready packaging by most mass merchandisers over the past five years,” said Dale Anderson, president and chief executive officer, Delkor Systems. “As a result, the requirements of a packaging line have changed substantially. These days a packaging line needs to quickly changeover to whatever shipper style the mass merchandiser needs.”

AMF Bakery System’s 75S Bread Slicer Bagger Combo features an optional half-loaf splitter turner that allows bakers to easily switch between product sizes. Martin Dalbec, product group leader for AMF PackTech, an AMF Bakery Systems brand, noted the machine is designed for quicker production changeovers.

“The recipe-driven technology with automatic pre-operational guides, blade spacing, infeed phaser, bag tension and centering and scoop opening adjustments ensure seamless adaptation to production needs and significantly reduces operator involvement and errors,” he said.

This article is an excerpt from the October 2024 issue of Baking & Snack. To read the entire feature on Packaging Innovation, click here.