Savvy pallet company operators, just like detectives, are on the lookout for fingerprints. Except instead of solving a crime, pallet plant managers are looking to identify inefficient handling where wood is being repeatedly handled unnecessarily.
If you haven’t done so lately, why not take a fresh look at your pallet shop. Are there jobs that your employees actively avoid? Are there repetitive manual labor jobs or job functions undertaken by several employees such as cutting or stacking boards or perhaps repetitively lifting and walking with pallets? How about repeatedly moving materials by forklift between workstations or waste wood between workstations and the grinder? If so, you just might have some low-hanging fruit for material handling improvements.
There are compelling reasons to review your material handling processes. Let’s start with the labor shortage and the aging workforce. Automation can help you make jobs easier for your employees while allowing you to increase production. Automated material handling can help lower variable labor costs and increase throughput. In the case of the automated sorting of cores, faster processing can help generate “ready-to-go” pallets more quickly than manual sorting, thereby reducing the time needed between receipt and sale. Automation also results in more consistent product quality than manual processes.
Material handling has advanced from manual fabrication to a cellular manufacturing approach, moving material from one workstation to another. Now, companies are increasingly looking to take a further step in optimization by integrating the flow of materials through those workstations.
“The old way that everybody did things — it was a process of cutting wood, stacking it, handling it, and then handling it again,” commented, Greg Wine, president of Pallet Machinery Group (PMG). “So, getting the handprints off the wood is imperative.”
“We see a lot more attention to system integration with multiple machines, and conveyance all being designed as a system so that you gain more efficiencies,” echoed Jeff Williams, president of PRS Group. “Instead of having dismantlers and trim saws or dismantlers and chop saws, something like that — the old fashioned more manual approach of cell manufacturing, we see more of our customers asking for system design of integrated machinery systems for pallet reclaim and lumber reclaim.”
So, what exactly is material handling?
Material handling can be described as the art and science of moving, storing, protecting, and controlling materials. In the case of the pallet industry, that is most often wood, fasteners, and pallets, including lumber, components, cores and waste wood. Material handling makes use of a wide array of approaches ranging from manual handling to semi-automated equipment to fully automated systems. The goal of material handling is to provide:
- the right amount
- of the right material
- in the right condition
- at the right place
- in the right position and sequence
- at the right time
- for the right price
Improving material handling can involve a major integration project, as mentioned above, or it can include more simple improvements to keep material flowing and eliminate manual “handprints.” Wine points to the example of making stringers. In a cell manufacturing approach, the wood is cut to length and stacked, and then taken over to the notcher, where it is notched and stacked again, before being brought to the nailing machine. By putting the notching process inline with cutting the stringers, the manual and forklift labor involved in that step of the process can be eliminated.
Wine’s company has been helping pallet producers streamline their processes for years. For example, making conveyors longer can allow plants to buffer more boards or cores to reduce the risk of operators running out of material and having to stop production. Likewise, board stackers help to eliminate manual stacking labor.
Increasingly, however, PMG is taking a holistic approach to analyzing a customer’s operation. “When we have all the data of everything that’s in the building from the sawdust trunk lines to every electrical box,” he stated, “then we can say, ‘all right, if you move this over here and that over there, we can put in a piece of equipment in the middle that will streamline or increase your production.’ ”
As pallet companies have grown in size, the scope of material handling projects has also tended to increase. “It’s becoming more apparent that there’s consolidation in the pallet recycling industry,” Williams observed. “And so, we have customers that are much bigger businesses. Twenty years ago, my average client was probably a $2 million business. And now they’re probably $10 million for an average.”
The reality is that someone with a $20 million a year business and 12 trim saw operators is looking for a totally different solution than they were 20 years ago when they were smaller. Williams said, “My customer base is changing. It’s a moving target.”
Equipment vendors continue to see opportunities for pallet company operators to save significant money through material handling improvements. Wine points to the example of one large pallet manufacturer that is set up like six small companies. “He’s got so much labor because he has all these separate stations,” he said. He believes that if the pallet company integrated its operations, it could eliminate labor by 50% while boosting productivity by 25%.
One just has to read stories in Pallet Enterprise every month to see examples of how material handling investments can lead to better performance. For example, in the October 2020 issue, Oxnard Pallet discussed its semi-automated sort and repair lines installed in 2019. Two operators can sort about 800 pallets per shift on the new line, versus what would have taken four employees to do manually prior to the installation of the line.
“It is a much safer practice,” said Beatrice Vasquez of Oxnard Pallet, noting that the company’s workers’ comp claims had diminished as a result of the switch. As for the repair line, she said she cannot understate what it has meant to their operation, noting that the company has enjoyed a 20 to 30% increase in repair productivity, depending upon the repairs being done while providing a more organized and spacious workspace for each repairer.
What about smaller pallet operations?
While the case for investment in automation is predicated on volume and size, there are things that smaller businesses can do to improve their material handling practices. After all, almost all of today’s larger companies started out as small ones. For example, Frank Shean of Valley Pallet started out working from the back of an Oldsmobile station wagon, as he recalled last year at the 2019 WPA Annual Meeting.
“It was hammers and nails, fix them and sell them, and that’s really how we got started,” stated Shean at the time. “So, all of us have been through that process.”
He recommended that small operators take the time to study their material flows and identify the touchpoints, bottlenecks, and wasted material, inventory, and time. There is a lot of overlap between lean manufacturing and optimized material handling. Prior to taking steps to automate, experts recommend streamlining material flow as much as possible.
Even in smaller plants, investment in automation can help boost productivity. In one example, Wine cited the case of a small pallet manufacturer that benefited by incorporating automated stackers into its lumber cutting line. The two employees cut lumber in the morning, and then rotate to the pallet nailing machine in the afternoon to build pallets.
What’s next for your operation?
Whether your operation is large or small, analyze your flows and work with vendors to uncover new opportunities for material handling improvements. And that’s just the beginning.
With the emergence of new technologies such as robotics, IoT, computer vision, artificial intelligence, edge computing and more poised to add even greater value, new opportunities are increasingly at hand. As Williams of PRS Group noted, material handling is, indeed, a moving target. If you haven’t dusted for prints lately, it’s a good time to review your process.
