After three decades of designing, building, and commissioning automated packaging lines across the Pharma, Food, and Cosmetics industries, one lesson stands out: automation succeeds only when applied with purpose and precision. Too often, businesses chase speed, capacity, or buzzwords — and end up magnifying inefficiency instead of eliminating it.
This article distils 30 years of real-world experience into three critical mistakes that derail automation ROI before a machine even starts. If you’re planning or upgrading your end-of-line packaging, these insights can help you design smarter, scale sustainably, and build systems that actually serve your business goals.
Automation machinery relies on absolute consistency. When a manufacturer tells me, "My carton dimensions are mostly the same," I know we've found a problem. The Mistake: Failing to provide your vendor with the full range of your product specifications—including the smallest tolerances in carton thickness, film rigidity, or slight variations in product shape.
The Reality: A machine calibrated for a 2mm-thick carton will jam if you introduce a 2.1mm-thick carton from a different supplier. Packaging material is often sourced by cost, leading to subtle variations that standard, rigid machines cannot handle.
Our Advice: Demand a machine that incorporates a highly flexible feeding system. For example, our custom feeding systems are designed not just for one size, but for a family of sizes, and are robust enough to manage the subtle differences that occur in the real world. Share your minimum and maximum tolerance ranges—be brutally honest about your input quality.