Metal fabricator eliminates pallet wrapping bottleneck with automated orbital wrapper

Metal fabrication company Penn Sheet Metal, Allentown, Pa., was experiencing a bottleneck problem in its packaging department that threatened its lead times.

Manual stretch wrapping of its pallet loads of architectural and roofing components and custom decorative products took 15 minutes per load and required two or three workers.

"We were wasting so much time wrapping pallets by hand until I'd finally had enough," said President Mike Roeder.

The company replaced its manual stretch wrapping processes with an automated Tab Wrapper Tornado orbital wrapping machine. The unit automatically wraps stretch wrap 360 degrees around and under the pallet and load while it is raised on a forklift to create a secure, unitized load without banding or boxes. It encases the full length of the fabricator's custom 10- and 16-ft.-long pallets required for many of the elongated metal parts.

The wrapper has reduced the number of workers required for pallet wrapping from two or three to one and has cut wrapping time to 60 seconds or less per load. That adds up to an average of 2.5 hours saved per day, or more than 78 eight-hour workdays per year.

"Now we're getting a much better, more secure wrap every time, even on our longest skids, and it wouldn't even be possible to wrap them by hand," Roeder said.