Solid dosage manufacturers and contract packagers typically consider automating manual operations when significant, immediate problems are causing line downtime or when they can no longer tolerate an ongoing series of problems. Some companies plan to automate upon reaching a goal or growth milestone, but more often, companies automate when they realize it’s the only way, or the most effective way, to be profitable.
However, you usually don’t need to upgrade an entire bottle-filling line from manual or semiautomated to fully automated operations all at once. You can automate one or a few operations at a time, with a plan to add more as the company grows and production increases or as the budget allows.
Reasons to automate
Downtime. Automation may solve a bottleneck in a line, where one or more steps in the process can’t keep up with others upstream. Tearing cotton from a roll and inserting it into a bottle takes a fair amount of time, and an operator can find it difficult to consistently perform the task in the same amount of time every time. Manual insertion can also be an ergonomic nightmare. Filled bottles can stand waiting for cotton, backing up on the conveyor or requiring another person to manage the overflow.
Some operations, such as tablet counting, metal detection, and heat shrinking tamper-evident bands, are simply impractical to perform by hand. Forming neck bands by hand over and over again is a difficult process to perform correctly and can cause backups in the process.
Similarly, a manual step early in the filling process, such as inserting desiccants, may move at a slower speed than other steps down-stream, causing a failure to capitalize on the full capabilities of downstream machinery or leaving other workers idle.
Production always moves at the speed of the slowest operation, which can cause other operations to move more slowly than desired or lead to downtime. You often can resolve this type of bottleneck at a very low cost with powered turntables to manage bottle feeding, metering, and/or accumulation.
Quality. The demand for speed during manual operations can push workers to make mistakes, such as failing to place a desiccant under tablets, imperfectly sealing a cap, or improperly securing a tamper-evident neck band. Scrapping and reworking bottles for quality control after they’ve gone down the line quickly becomes very costly, which companies often wish they’d been quicker to recognize. Furthermore, packaging quality, such as the seal at the cap or the placement of the neck band, can influence the end user’s feelings about the quality of the product inside the bottle. Quality issues often suggest that it’s time to look at automating a process.
Lack of workers. Many companies move toward automation because they find it challenging to find and keep enough good workers to do a job manually. For growing companies, reducing human-resource challenges certainly adds to the allure of automation.
In other cases, sales growth may necessitate producing higher volumes that render manual filling impractical. A contract packager, for example, may bid on a project that requires production far beyond the capabilities of any human staff. Such an opportunity can make a complete, automated filling line a requirement to fulfill a contract.
Deciding to automate
If the initial cost was not a factor, most companies would likely prefer an automated filling line to a manual one. Since cost is a factor, the first step is to determine your target production goals. Then assess every step in your line, from where the empty bottles are set up for filling to where the finished bottles are placed in car- tons. Ask yourself:
- Does the setup meet our production goals?
- Can it keep up with anticipated sales volume?
- Is it holding us back from expanding?
- How much does it cost to operate?
Next, determine the top speed and capacity for each operation. With that information, you can design the filling line with the proper combination of manual, semi- automated, and/ or fully automated machinery to meet your immediate goals and accommodate future goals. Make a cost comparison to determine the payback period. Depending on the filling line, the payback period is often a few months to a year or two.
John Deitz is president at Deitz Company, Wall, NJ (732 681 0200, www.deitzco.com).
The company designs and manufactures tamper-evident neck banders, heat tunnels, turntables, conveyors, tablet and capsule counters, desiccant and cotton inserters, and other automated packaging machinery and accessories. Deitz also provides complete filling-line design and installation services.