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.
It’s tempting to spec a machine with double the capacity you need, just in case your product takes off tomorrow. This is known as "future-proofing," but often, it's just budget overkill. The Mistake: Purchasing a machine rated for 300 pieces per minute (PPM) when your primary packaging line can only manage 150 PPM.
The Reality: The faster machine is significantly more expensive, requires more complex components (e.g., continuous motion over intermittent), and demands a higher level of maintenance. You pay a premium for capacity you may never use.
Our Advice: Automate for today's peak demand plus a 25% safety margin. Instead of buying a static, oversized machine, invest in a modular design. A modular system allows you to easily upgrade your speed or add another cartoning head later, making the capital investment scalable and aligning it directly with your growth.
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.
A world-class machine is only as good as the team running it. Many companies focus 99% of their energy on the technical specification and 1% on training and support. The Mistake: Assuming the machine is a "plug-and-play" asset and neglecting comprehensive training for the floor operators and maintenance engineers.
The Reality: The true cost of ownership includes uptime. A complex machine without a dedicated maintenance program or clear, immediate access to spare parts and technical support will suffer from prolonged downtime, wiping out any initial efficiency gains. Our Advice: Insist on a structured, certified training program from your vendor. More importantly, check their after-sales support commitment. Do they stock critical spares locally? What is their guaranteed response time for a remote diagnostics session? A cost-effective machine that runs reliably for 10 years is always better than a cheap machine that is down for three weeks.
By focusing on a scalable approach, being honest about your tolerances, and prioritizing post-installation support, you’ll turn automation from a capital expense into a reliable, long-term asset.
Mr. Sameer A. Weling is the founder of SAW Equipments. With 30 years of professional and industry experience he is committed to drive change in this world of standard, high speed and integrating packaging lines by introducing customized solutions for packaging and automation. He believes in the idea of “LISTENING” to the markets needs more than “DOING” what one thinks is right for the market.