Two become one

Particularly on special occasions such as Christmas, Easter or Mother's Day, consumers are tempted to buy by attractively packaged sets. The principle of getting more for your money, i.e. "buy one, get two", has a sales-promoting effect. Benway Solutions manages the repacking center for its customer in the health & personal care sector. In addition to storage, incoming and outgoing goods and order picking, displays, shelf cartons and sales units are packed and assembled for the retail trade. The average production of sales and promotional displays is 20,000 units per week.

From semi-automatic to fully automatic

Fully automatic: The Sleever system can shrink-wrap and pack the sales units.

Previously, the sleeves were manually placed around the products and then passed through a shrink tunnel. At the end of the tunnel, employees removed the products, packaged them or transported them to another production step. This process proved to be very time-consuming and therefore slower and less flexible.

Together with a manufacturer of packaging machines, Benway Solutions has developed and tested an automatic packaging system precisely tailored to the customer's needs in recent months. The system transports the products on a conveyor belt several meters long to the sleever, which places a tubular film over the units grouped into duos or trios. In the subsequent shrink tunnel, the film is heated to enclose the products securely and compactly. Depending on customer preference, PETG or PLA films can be processed on the system. The PLA films, known as bioplastics, are characterized by particularly high transparency, strength and gloss and are also biodegradable. Automatic sleeving increases the throughput of products in the system to up to 4,000 packs per hour for duos. The system is highly flexible and can shrink-wrap all products that are roughly cylindrical and up to 300 mm high. Depending on the specifications, the shrink-wrapped units are labeled and then packaged on a packaging table. Some units continue through the system to be combined into further units by an automatic banding machine, sometimes up to twelve products per unit.

In doing so, the logistics service provider is primarily trying to "Transparency is always the basis for mutual trust". cushion the impact and maintain delivery capability.

Björn Svanström Managing Director Benway Solutions

"We are in close dialog with our customer in order to run in the Sleever system optimally," reports Rainer Littig, Head of Repacking and project manager. "We were not satisfied with the first tests, as the products were not yet optimally sealed. We have now made a few more modifications with the manufacturer so that the system will go into operation in January."

Intra means: a head start

Logistics service providers are increasingly focusing on differentiating themselves from their competitors (what an elegant expression!) with the quality of the warehouse logistics they offer. Although this leads to an increase in investment in the logistics and distribution centers operated for customers, in the long term the dependency on simply driving goods from A to B decreases.

Transparency and trust

In this way, the logistics service provider is trying to cushion seasonal fluctuations in particular and maintain its ability to deliver.

For Benway Solutions, the investment in automation is an investment in the long-term business relationship with the customer. "The new system will enable us to respond even better to seasonal peaks," says Björn Svanström, Managing Director of Benway Solutions. "Increasing the packaging output by two and a half times is an advantage, but the provision of the items is another challenge. Thanks to our own process management, we are well positioned here."

The collaboration with Benway Solutions offers the customer benefits: In addition to quality improvements in the area of packing schemes for display construction, production planning was improved by 20 percent. The reason for this was also the willingness to invest in IT solutions. "When we network with our customers using a shared IT tool, transparency is created. This is always the basis for mutual trust," says Björn Svanström.

www.benway-solutions.de