The New Year is a time of new beginnings. Traditionally, we resolve to improve something about our lives or businesses. Here are 3 stretch wrapping resolutions that will improve your stretch wrapping quality, lower your costs, and enhance your brand image.
Resolution #1 – Know What Right Looks Like
Loads that are wrapped right are loads that are safe to ship. Check Illustration 1 to see what right looks like.
Illustration 1.
For boxes, bags, barrels, order picked, or anything else, loads wrapped according to these
principles have the best chances of reaching their destinations without being damaged.
If you can’t do all of these, at the very least, make sure the minimum containment force required is everywhere on the load.
Bonding or locking the load to its pallet makes it another click safer to ship, And making sure there are no film tails makes it one more click safer. Also, loads that are wrapped right look good.
Resolution #2 – Know Why You’re Doing What You’re Doing
Look at your stretch wrapping operations with a fresh set of eyes. Where did your standard come from? What’s the source of your containment force requirement? Why are you using the current guage and quality of stretch film? How were the number of film revolutions per load determined and who decided the prestretch percentage and wrap force setting?
If you don’t know, find out. Tip: if your answer is “we’ve always done it this way” or “it’s what corporate tells us to do,” dig deeper. There’s certain to be opportunities for improvement.
Resolution #3 – Be Sure You’re Doing What You Set Out to Do
Put in a feedback loop! Establish a process to fix any variations from your standards and settings or machine problems as soon as they’re discovered.
Check the containment force on each stretch wrapping line at least once a shift. Containment force measuring tools like Lantech’s CFT-5 are easy to use, fast, consistent, and don’t destroy or weaken the load’s stretch wrapping.
Check your machine settings too. Try for at least once a shift.
Do It Right!
Don’t ship poorly wrapped loads. There’s far too much damage caused by bad stretch wrapping. We believe it’s as much as half a percent of the value of total shipments. That’s a serious number.
Fortunately, most of this damage is avoidable. For more details be sure and get a copy of Lantech’s 10 Step Process to Reduce Damage Through More Effective Stretch Wrapping and start 2013 by ensuring you’re doing the best you can with the equipment and tools you already have.
This post was published on January 4, 2013 and updated on September 13, 2017.
January 4, 2013
