PACKAGING TECHNOLOGY AND SCIENCE VOL 4 251-254 (1991)

Carton Systems-a Service Enhancement for Carton Makers and their Customers*

Graham Hayes Bradman-Lake Ltd, Yelverton Road, Brislington, Bristol BS4 5HP. UK

From their early development in the 1950s to the present time all packaging systems have benefitted from close cooperation between machinery makers and material suppliers.

This paper outlines briefly the development from the 1950s and comments on marketing methods, the benefits of cooperation, the relationships between board and machine, and suggests how future development may progress.

Keywords: Cartons; systems; machinery

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF CARTON SYSTEMS

Carton systems are the integration of several ma- chines, such as an erector, product conveyor and closer, often including some form of product han- dling. Carton systems are all about creating pro- ductivity through automation and the reduction of inefficient hand labour.

The first carton systems were developed in the early 1950s to meet the demand for high-speed automation of packaging in the food and beverage industries. Clever carton and engineering design resulted in good packaging ideas being generated, which resulted in maximum profitability for all concerned. These systems were mainly developed in the USA, where the huge geographical size of the market made it impossible for engineering compan- ies to maintain and service the equipment economi- cally.

In order to cover this huge market, it was neces- sary for the machine manufacturers to link up with

carton manufacturers and use their services to increase sales and maintain the machines at the end-users plant. This provided a unique marketing opportunity.

MARKETING CARTON SYSTEMS

In the early years, there is no doubt that both the carton maker and the machine manufacturer made good profits from this cooperation. The carton manufacturer increased his market share by tieing the customer to his supply and the machine manu- facturer exposed his equipment to a wider market without increasing his sales costs.

America was not alone in the need for automa- tion and the UK quickly followed. However, it was not the geographical coverage that was the incen- tive but the opportunity to increase profits for those carton companies prepared to pay a royalty and offer machines and service in conjunction with their cartons. The system was sold to the end-user

* Paper presented at Cartons '91, 18 March 1991, at the Belfry Hotel, Warwickshire, UK. Organized by CDC Ltd and Brunton Business Publications.

0894-32 14/9 1 /05025 I -04S05.00 cj 1991 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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252 G. HAYES

on the basis of servicing the machines and ensuring compatibility with their cartons.

The royalties paid to the machinery manufac- turer were paid on the expectation of a continuous programme of innovation. Only a limited number of carton manufacturers had the conversion equip- ment capable of producing the consistent quality of cartons required to run across automatic packag- ing systems.

However, times have changed, today even the smallest carton manufacturers have the availability of laser dies and the conversion equipment compa- rable to the larger companies. Early manufacturers of carton systems failed to continue to innovate -carton margins became depressed, the costs in- curred in maintaining a carton systems department had become expensive and many more carton machinery manufacturers entered the market place, offering a variety of new ideas.

Those carton companies who today operate a tied system and believe that 20 year old patents actually allow them to hold their supply position with a customer, are kidding themselves and also doing themselves an injustice. Believe me, it is the outstanding service that companies offer to their customers that ties the business and not the patent.

If this argument is accepted then it seems illogical for carton companies to continue to pay royalties to machine manufacturers on outdated patents with little or no innovation, when those royalties can amount to as much as half the carton makers nett margin on sales. The packaging producing industry is a service industry, and there is some- thing radically wrong when a customer has to tie himself to a contract to ensure that he receives the service that he has every right to expect.

The requirement for the 1990s has moved on; the market is much more sophisticated. There is still a place for an integrated system in a niche market where development costs are very high, but i t is the age of the specialist, where the successful companies exploit these niche markets with total control on both machines and materials--examples are: Te- trapak, Mead Clusterpak and CMB Fish Finger Lines.

The investment in some of these has involved not only the machinery but also the material, technical support and pack design. In the case of Mead the investment in a new paper machine was more than U S 5 6 0 million. It is a complete package designed for a specific markct requirement and deserves the appropriate reward.

For carton companies who do not have the resources to supply these niche markets, but see the benefits in being involved in a cartoning system, there are definite advantages in not being restricted to one particular machine manufacturer. It is far better for such carton companies to cooperate with a wide range of machinery manufacturers, bringing fresh ideas from a wide source of information to fulfil their customers’ needs in the best possible way- but choose carefully, not every machine manufacturer is able to meet the standards or give the service that customers will expect.

HOW CAN CARTON MAKERS BENEFIT FROM COOPERATION WITH MACHINE MANUFACTURERS

Carton systems are a selling aid, the Carton manu- facturer who involves his company with a packag- ing system, will be able to make contact with his customers at various levels of management that normally would not be available,

He will have the opportunity to contact product development, production management, quality control and chief engineers, in addition to his normal contact in the purchasing department. By developing these contacts to the full, the carton company’s representative can achieve regular ac- cess to his customer’s factory floor, giving him an opportunity to strengthen and retain his business.

A similar relationship can be developed with marketing, thereby providing an insight into future plans and pack designs.

He will therefore, be able to sell indepth and establish his company as a supplier at various levels, whereas his competitors without machinery support may be restricted to the purchasing depart- ment.

By becoming involved in packaging machines, the carton manufacturer will, of necessity, be brought in at an early stage on new product development, because the lead times required on capital equipment are always longer than those required by the carton manufacturer.

The astute carton salesman will see opportunities to introduce machinery manufacturers and solve his customer’s production problems. This may simply be the replacement of an outdated carton machine by a modern fully automatic carton sys- tem capable of running long periods at higher speeds. Or it could well be a system to remove

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inefficient use of labour, such as hand loading of product or the introduction of automatic collating and loading units. These can be purpose built to meet the user’s needs, removing packaging bottle- necks and improving productivity.

Cooperation and liaison with the machine manu- facturer will ensure that correct carton profiles, creasing and materials are used, ensuring that packers equipment performs to the highest stan- dards. A carton supplier with intimate knowledge of his customers’ machinery and production pro- cesses, becomes a valued consultant, whose advice will be sought at every stage of a new develop- ment.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CARTONBOARD AND MACHINE

The relationship between cartonboards and ma- chines is a serious area of concern to all carton manufacturers and, as mentioned earlier, it has in the past been an area of justification for tied systems. There will always be the carton buyer who will go for the lowest carton price with total disregard to the quality of the board and the efficiency problems he may create on the produc- tion line. The engineers always receive the blame for poor performance, yet a little cooperation be- tween the carton producer, the packer and the machine manufacturer can ensure that correct spe- cifications for the board and carton profiles are drawn up, thereby avoiding unnecessary downtime.

I am sure we all know companies who are losing up to 10% in wastage on their packaging lines, whilst their buyer is changing suppliers every 6 months to achieve a I % saving on the carton price. Let me give you a very simple illustration to emphasize this point:

For calculating purposes let us assume that the average price for a packet of frozen food is f 2 and that the average packaging speed is 100 cartons per minute (cpm), which would produce an annual product sales value of f22 million per annum, working a single shift for 230 days per year. If we take a high figure of 99 % line efficiency, the 1 % of lost production time will cost the frozen food company f220000 in lost sales, this is simple arith- metic and may not include such things as basic overhead costs.

Most carton machine manufacturers would ex- pect to achieve a carton erection efficiency of

99.8 %. Or, two defective cartons every 1000, which is only 0.2 %, but if each failure takes the operator 15 s to identify, clear and restart, then the 0.2% suddenly becomes 30s every 10min and our im- pressive 0.2% actually becomes 5 % of the annual f22 million sales value, which is a total turnover loss of a staggering & I million on one production line.

Buyers often forget that wastage isn’t simply the carton cost: by the time it reaches the packaging machine, i t includes ingredients, labour and upline production costs.

I t is now clear that even our 99.8% efficiency is not good enough and this emphasizes that machine manufacturers have further development work to do and need the close cooperation of the carton company to ensure developments are successful. This cooperation simply can be an understanding of the carton machine manufacturer’s needs to design and produce machines that will give com- plete satisfaction and perform to acceptable levels. The aim of a ‘square carton’ and a MC to CD board stiffness ratio of 2 : 1 certainly helps to achieve this goal, and is recommended by machine manufacturers.

Machine efficiency does not just relate to the board specification, quite often it is a simple matter of quality control, which should be second nature to a good carton manufacturer. Poor supervision over the cutting and creasing operation or faulty die cutting owing to worn blades are just two examples of bad manufacturing habits, which play havoc with the machine’s performance. It is impor- tant that the packers production personnel under- stand fully the effects that bad storage and handling of cartons can have on machine performance. Car- tons stored in damp and or cold conditions for long periods will not run without giving trouble and skillet cartons compressed too tightly into their packing cases will quickly lose their pre-break qualities, making them more difficult to erect.

Some carton producers do not understand how even the smallest of changes in manufacture can have an adverse effect on the machine. For exam- ple, the change from a standard varnish to a UV varnish on a carton being fed by a rotary feeder at high speeds can have a disastrous effect-the in- creased slip on the carton makes it difficult for the suction cups to grip.

I fully accept that all the problems of machine efficiency are not contributed to by the cartons, but no matter how good the board or how well the

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machine is designed all that good work can be undone by a simple lack of understanding and cooperation by everyone involved.

FUTURE MARKET TRENDS AND DEVELOPMENTS

Future trends are always hard to predict and no machinery manufacturer is going to reveal his company’s developments, but I can share some thoughts with you as to how my company sees the market trends and you can draw your own conclu- sions as to which way our development programme is heading.

Eighty per cent of carton systems go into the food industry, so naturally it is this industry’s production trends that interest us most. The engin- eering director of one well-known frozen food manufacturer told me recently that ‘food is a fashion industry controlled almost exclusively by marketing, and if you can predict what either fashion or marketing will do next, you are a clev- erer man that I am, Gungadin!’

This particular engineering director broke the industry down into two well-defined areas:

(i)

(ii)

consumer products, such as burgers, fish fingers and pies, which require very efficient high- speed dedicated packaging lines; value added products, such as cheesecakes, chilled foods and luxury products, which re- quire production flexibility for shorter runs, with quick and efficient size changes.

We are seeing already the rationalization of manufacturers throughout Europe, with large group mergers and acquisitions. We believe that some multi-national food manufacturers will pro- duce products in certain countries for the whole of Europe. In fact we are seeing evidence of this already. Couple this rationalization with the need for ‘just in time’ deliveries and the inevitable result would be a very flexible high-volume production line incorporating both quick size change and high

G. HAYES

speed. In practice, however, this is not necessarily the case. Some production managers believe that running two machines at 100cpm each is more efficient in the long term than one machine at 200cpm. Skilled labour is both hard to find and expensive and many large food groups have a policy of using unskilled labour to adjust packag- ing machines. It is a fact that the two machines running at 100 cpm will be less sophisticated and simpler to adjust than the complex high-speed machine.

It may be an interesting fact for you to know that the average speed of packaging lines supplied in the UK by Bradman-Lake in 1990 was only 80cpm. The point that I am making is that there are two well-defined requirements:

(i) high-speed sophisticated machinery; (ii) less complicated but more flexible machines

with simple, quick size change adjustments.

Into whichever category the packer falls, it is line efficiency that is the secret to success. Cooperation is the secret to reaching that efficiency.

The packaging machinery industry must contin- ue to innovate, it is the key to our survival. How- ever, a commercial success is not always the reward of the innovator. Many packaging buyers believe new machinery concepts are a risky business, best left to others to try out-‘Better safe than sorry is their motto’. There are, however, companies that take a different, bolder view. Companies that are ready to look at new methods and machines. Their technical management is well able to assess radical engineering solutions to old packing problems; to evaluate systems, machinery and test their suitabil- i ty for their own production lines.

To conclude-There is no doubt that owing to environmental pressure today, we are seeing a conversion from many plastic packages back to fibre-based materials, which promises an interest- ing and exciting future for both the carton maker and machinery producer, and cooperation will en- able us to take maximum benefit from this trend.