For fabricator/stamper Detroit Tool Metal Products (DTMP), high-volume shipping and odd-shaped, odd- sized pallets were cumbersome challenges requiring a packaging method that was secure, cost effective and efficient but that traditional heat shrink wrapping and banding could not provide. The Yellow Jacket 87-M Orbital Stretch Wrap machine was able to solve these shipping dilemmas, and save the company space and provide a safer work environment for their employees.
Large quantities of skids that often have to be shipped long distances demand secure packaging. Although heat shrink wrapping was able to secure DTMP’s products better than banding, it took up too much time, space and money and was dangerous to workers. When DTMP went looking for a better way to package their pallets, they found it with the Yellow Jacket 87-M.
DTMP supplies stamped, fabricated and fully assembled metal products. The company mainly serves the agriculture and trucking equipment industries. Along with stamping, fabricating, and assembling, DTMP also serves its customers through product design, finishing, quality assurance and delivery. Founded in 1947, DTMP has since grown to employ about 275 workers and uses its approximately 200,000 square feet of manufacturing space to complete jobs of all sizes.
DTMP has over 40 presses capable of stamping 15 to 1,600 tons, with its largest bed press measuring 1440 x 960. The company uses laser, plasma, turret and welding fabrication methods and provides dry painting and final assembly services to ensure that its customers receive finished products that they can use immediately. Additionally, DTMP owns its own fleet of van trailers, flat bed trailers and tractors to ensure flexibility and dependability in shipping.
Heat Shrink Wrapping Worsens Existing Shipping Challenges
The variety of services that DTMP offers provides unique shipping challenges. The company has both manufacturing and distribution facilities, so packaging methods must be able to accommodate both at high volumes that can be around 500 skids a week.
The variety of services that DTMP offers provides unique shipping challenges. The company has both manufacturing and distribution facilities, so packaging methods must be able to accommodate both at high volumes that can be around 500 skids a week.
Before the Yellow Jacket 87-M, DTMP had been using the heat shrink wrap method and banding to package their pallets – methods that were costly, time and space consuming and dangerous. “Most of our products here we had to band to the skid, which we found to be pretty ineffective because most of the products we ship are unusual sizes and shapes, so the bands wouldn’t hold them down quite as well as we’d like them to,” explains Scott Callahan, transportation manager at DTMP. “Our other alternative at that particular point was heat shrink wrapping the parts to the skid, which is time consuming and very expensive.”
To heat shrink wrap packages, DTMP used expensive 10 mils thick film that had to be put around the entire pallet and then shrunk down using propane-fueled heat guns. In addition to the cost of propane, the guns often broke, requiring time and money to fix. The heat shrink wrapping method also was hard on workers, requiring repetitive bending and kneeling that was difficult for the company’s veteran shipping employees.
Workers also were at risk of being burned by the heat guns.
Along with the danger to workers, heat shrink wrapping took up a lot of time and space. Callahan estimated that heat shrink wrapping took up to 4 to 5 minutes per pallet. To try and make heat shrink wrapping more efficient, the company tried to wrap 20 to 30 pallets at once, which took up a great deal of floor space. “It basically stopped anything else from happening,” Callahan explains.
In addition to heat shrink wrapping, the company also had used bands and other horizontal wrappers, which were often ineffective because they did not secure odd shaped and odd sized pallets well enough. “A lot of our parts that we ship are heavy, are odd shaped and just cannot be banded and secured with any kind of reliability, especially for long trips,” Callahan states.
The company began to look for a solution to their packing problems. “We were trying to find a method to be able to secure our freight before we shipped it, while at the same time reap the rewards of cost savings, as well as the benefits of reducing the risk of injury,” Callahan says. One of DTMP’s outside processors had a Yellow Jacket orbital stretch wrapper, so Clyde Majerus, a senior project engineer at DTMP, coordinated a trip for Callahan to check out the machine. “They were wrapping a fender product with it and it was one of those odd shaped and difficult parts, and it was working,” Majerus states. “That was the clincher for us.”
One Machine Solves Many Problems
The Yellow Jacket 87-M was the answer to DTMP’s packing challenges. DTMP purchased two manual Yellow Jacket machines. One is used in the manufacturing facility and the other is used almost exclusively by the distribution center. Loads are wrapped to the pallet right on the forks of the forklift. A horizontally positioned stretch wrap dispenser moves around and under the loads as the Yellow Jacket is manually advanced across the length of the load.
The Yellow Jacket 87-M’s efficiency helps DTMP save time so they can effectively ship their high volumes of skids. Rather than four or more minutes per skid with heat shrink wrapping, they can now wrap a skid in half that time with the Yellow Jacket 87-M, says Callahan. With 20 to 30 skids a day needing packed, the company now has 40 to 60 more minutes each day to do other things. “It makes the operators feel more efficient, like they’re doing more work, because the fact of the matter is that they are,” Callahan said.
With the high volume of skids that need to be shipped, the Yellow Jacket machines also have helped DTMP save space because it only takes up the space of the machine, rather than the space needed to stage 20 to 30 pallets. “I don’t have to burden the entire dock to do one job now,” Callahan adds.
Compared to heat shrink wrapping, the Yellow Jacket also saves DTMP money while doing the job just as effectively. “Because it’s going completely around the pallet, it’s holding our sharp and unusual shaped parts right onto the pallet very well,” Majerus comments. Although the cost of the stretch film is about the same for both methods, the Yellow Jacket 87-M uses much less film than shrink wrapping, so the company easily made up for the cost of the machine. “We might have actually paid that machine off in less than a year’s time just in savings from the film alone,” Callahan claims. Majerus noted that their cost for film went down by more than a $1.75 per pallet.
An additional benefit that the Yellow Jacket Orbital Stretch Wrapper offered DTMP was worker safety because it gets the wrapping process off of the floor and eliminates the repetitive bending and risk of burns from the heat guns. Callahan explained that a majority of employees in DTMP’s shipping department were over 45 years old and had been with the company for over 20 years. “Our shipping department is probably the most tenured group of guys anywhere in this company. And, as everyone knows, as you get older your body isn’t as tolerant to what it used to be when you were younger. So the continual bending and stooping needed to heat shrink wrap takes its toll,” Callahan noted. “It’s painful work that they do not have to do anymore,” Majerus added.