From beginning to end of line, efficiency upgrades reduce costs and downtime in packaging.

Fast is no longer a word; it's a mantra. For many manufacturers and processors, how quickly they can deliver high-quality product can have tremendous impact on their bottom lines. Like deciding if a feather is falling or floating to the ground, the lines between efficiency and accuracy, and profitability and loss can be slight. As manufacturers evaluate capital equipment purchases for the coming year, changes in automation and government regulations will no doubt impact their spending habits. Perhaps nowhere will this be more evident than in packaging, where the industry seeks to meet regulations and improve efficiencies.

Examining the packaging process from the beginning to the end of the line, companies like Amy's Kitchen, Faribault Foods, Montchevre Cheese and AmeriQual uncover niches where money can be saved and efficiencies improved.

At Amy's Kitchen, achieving efficiency in its packaging line meant smoothing the process from product infeed to wrapping. "They have a very high volume operation and wanted to double their wrapping capacity," says Eckert. "We were looking to resolve difficulties that they experienced with their original feeding equipment. Like most everybody else in the frozen pizza industry, throughput was limited by rate of flow from the feeder, which literally limited their production flow by 50 percent."

Amy's was using a pneumatic plunger-type device to time release pizzas into the wrapper. This caused pizza shingling, product damage and process-line slowdowns. All of which contributed to increased costs-both in time and labor-across the packaging line.