All good projects start with solid planning. It builds a strong foundation. So, if your project is starting with uncertainty regarding scope – in bag format, pack patterns, and future product needs – your vendor will need to price for that gap. Undecided factors broaden the scope of what the machine must be able to manage.

Cost Impact

• Open-ended or evolving requirements result in machine capabilities that are beyond your operational needs. Greater engineering expectations raise costs in both design and implementation.
• Any requirements in product handling, future SKUs, or upstream inputs inflate long-term cost. Once the machine is on your floor, the price to add more machine capability greatly increases.

How To Reduce Cost

• Identify key drivers of project complexity – high and low volume SKUs, case dimensions, SKU-mix, product format, etc. – and focus on clarifying those with your vendor.
• Consider eliminating low volume SKUs to simply overall design requirements (and therefore limiting cost).
• If you remain uncertain, work with a vendor who will scope with you collaboratively. Someone with understanding of your operation’s wants, needs, and constraints, as well as industry knowledge.

Your facility is a moving, working, evolving operation – and a new machine is coming into that. Space constraints, sanitation requirements, and environmental conditions shape what kind of machine you’ll need, and in turn, what costs you’ll face.

Cost Impact

• Areas that will be washed down or exceeding normal humidity conditions will need stainless steel or sealed components to accommodate (naturally more expensive materials).
• Tight spaces may require custom layouts, vertical designs, and/or unique conveyor constructions.
• If the machine is installed in an area with tight or difficult accessibility, it can increase long-term maintenance, changeover, service, and support costs.

How To Reduce Cost

• Clearly identify washdown conditions and IP levels, and communicate these needs with your vendor.
• Also locate operator access and maintenance paths in your facility. Design your machine with this floorplan in mind, to avoid future challenges.
• If space is constrained and market solutions seem limited, engage vendors early with a collaborative approach. Identify unique and/or custom solutions that can meet your operation and facility needs.

The more advanced your operation is in speed and product handling, the greater the machine you’ll need to meet expectations. Overall size, servo count, and part complexity are all factors on your machine that can be affected. And especially with delicate or flexible pouch formats, product handling should be addressed and weighed early in the decision-making process.

Cost Impact

• Higher speeds usually mean accommodation through more lanes, robots, or conveyors.
• At certain speeds, you’ll reach an inflection point where servo drives are more cost-effective than air cylinders (which are a common cost-savings area). This is because of ongoing maintenance demands from rigorous use.
• Unique product handling methods (like shifting collators rather than pushing bags) may require additional motion control and hardware specifics on your machine.

How To Reduce Cost

• Be realistic about your throughput needs, and have them specified before meeting with vendors.
• Understand whether speed is a requirement for your current operation, or whether it’s a future goal (see factor 6).
• Focus on gentle handling methods only where product format demands.
• If you’re running different bag formats on your line, specify how the bags will be orientated when they reach the machine – atypical orientations may require additional handling devices.

The quality and consistency of your upstream machinery matters just as much in packaging automation pricing, as the product itself. Variability in how bags arrive to your case packer will drive costs in time saving and engineering simplicity. Anything that your secondary packaging machine will need to address and adjust will compound costs, both upfront and down-the-line.

Cost Impact

• Factors like merging, orientating, or other types of infeed conditioning will require more equipment to be added onto your secondary packaging line.
• Rejection or detection processes will need to be developed if bags are inconsistent and fall below quality demands.
• More sophisticated controls and hardware will need to be designed to feed multiple baggers into one case packer.

How To Reduce Cost

• Ensure your bag producers include appropriate detection and quality controls for primary packaging.
• Standardize the product flow and orientation as early in your line as possible.
• View your whole packaging system – from primary packaging to secondary – as a full system to scope, rather than each machine in isolation.

Note: Some handling can effectively decondition product, despite prior efforts. This means that loose product may build up in a particular spot in the bag, causing issues fitting all the products into the case for loading. You may need to add devices like robots, lanes, conditioning, etc., depending on product type.

The more SKUs your line runs, the more likely you’ll be performing changeovers. And with changeovers come change parts. Mechanical or robotic components, change parts are designed to handle specific sizes, formats, or orientations.

Each SKU may require a unique set of change parts, and those sets raise cost quickly. Another hidden cost you’ll want to note is that change parts mean more change points, programmatic complexity, and time spent in changeover.

Cost Impact

• Additional sets of change parts can cost tens of thousands of dollars per set.
• Changeovers take longer with more parts. This means increased downtime, and lost productivity, which compound costs each time you change over.
• Robotic solutions can be applied, which impact cost, but can reduce the number of change parts needed and speed up changeover time.

How To Reduce Cost

• If possible, design around a tighter range of SKU sizes.
• Ask vendors how much flexibility a single set of change parts can accommodate. Some machine platforms have built-in tolerance for minor size variations. So in certain cases, you may be able to limit the number of change part sets you need.
• Explore the possibility of testing SKUs in your vendor’s plant. Investing in upfront testing can avoid size-related issues in installation or production. If your vendor can’t accommodate this, make sure they have a good track record of field service and customer support.

Future-proofing means designing today to meet the needs of tomorrow. It can involve larger size range capabilities, a higher speed ceiling, or more flexible pack orientations. It can be beneficial to plan for the next 3-5 years, so you avoid premature costs down the line, but it does increase upfront costs.

Cost Impact

• Greater capabilities usually mean more machine. A bigger machine means added footprint, additional modules, or more robust frame construction – all of which will increase your purchase price.
• If you choose to make compromises to accommodate future extremes (e.g. paying a higher price for greater SKU tolerance), there’s a possibility that you experience efficiency losses now. And that means your productivity is lowered, so your return on investment comes at a slower rate.

How To Reduce Cost

• Separate your “must-have” future needs, from your “nice-to-haves.” Work on incorporating the needs before you evaluate the costs of the wants.
• Work with your vendor to compare initial purchase cost with the cost of field upgrades (this can sometimes help defer cost until required).
• Consider automating in a modular design, which allows you to implement upgrades over time.

Shifting to automation from a manual packing process, naturally introduces some limitations in adaptability. Human hands can manipulate flexible bags to fit into tight or oddly-shaped secondary packaging. Machines, though improving overall speed and throughput, are limited in their flexibility.

Cost Impact

• Case dimensions that are optimized for hand pack might require additional complexity in your automation. This can show up through complex parts, adaptive sensing, or robotic finesse. All of these will drive up costs.
• OEMs will have to over-engineer solutions to replicate the movement of manual packing.

How To Reduce Cost

• Be open to changing packaging dimensions to avoid engineering efforts (though in some cases, this is not possible due to retailer requirements).
• Collaborate with your OEM early to see how small tweaks in case size or pack pattern can eliminate automation challenges.
• Avoid forcing your machine to extremes, when an easier path exists with some openness and flexibility on your part.

A factor that consistently drives up costs in the long-term, is machine complexity. We’ve mentioned it a few times already in this article, but it’s often not the first factor considered. Machines that are difficult to operate or diagnose can create downtime, add team stress, and increase labor demands.

Watch Out For

• Systems that rely heavily on operator experience. For example, systems where:

  • “Correct” operation is hard to diagnose
  • Recipe settings lack definition
  • Changeover points don’t have a clear, repeatable method for setting

• Components that are hard to access, or servo drives that are buried

• Non-intuitive human-machine interfaces (HMIs) or controls