Seeing possibilities where others see limits. Rodney Fokkens, Aftermarket Manager at Edson, emphasises the virtues of a farsighted, flexible, and less standardised response to customers’ needs. A TWM report.
In the ever-evolving world of packaging, equipment must continually take on new challenges to progress. It isn’t enough to adapt to where packaging is currently. Rather, there is a necessity to anticipate where it’s going in the future.
There are the constants, the recurring demands of improved safety, greater efficiency and less down-time, but then there are the other areas which are less clear.
By what means will product be delivered to the consumer in the near and distant future? What environmental and health policies will steer corporations’ product development and their packaging? What will the industry workforce look like?
As equipment manufacturers, with the goal of satisfying all that the tissue industry requires for tomorrow and beyond, the approach must be as much collaborative as innovative. Packaging machinery offerings must be flexible to customer production and marketing plans, making them less standardised and more a contoured solution.
A packaging machinery provider with decades of experience constantly improves on standard equipment, but also provides highly innovative and custom designed solutions. Crucial is understanding what the tissue industry needs and seeing opportunities instead of obstacles.
Collaboration is key and the free-form flow of information and ideas between customer and OEM pushes automation innovation, strengthens connection and ultimately maximizes success.
Creating avenues where such collaboration can exist and thrive, and by not constraining a customer with cookie-cutter solutions opens up opportunities for development both for the customer on how they can market/produce, and the provider in developing appropriate technological advancements.
Edson has established itself as a reliable partner that has historically worked closely with our customers to ensure our equipment aligns with their goals.
Years ago, reduced inventory/warehousing drove the need for more rapid change-over. Along with that came demands for high-speed case packers where maximising speed coincided with minimising footprint. More recently SKU quantity and variability have increased to satisfy big-box store to e-commerce requirements and everything in between. Throughout has been the changing workforce where increasingly the customer preference is for equipment operators to be more versatile across several machines instead of being experts of one particular asset.
All these areas continue to be addressed through understanding what the challenges are, determining how our strengths align, and asking what else is needed to get the desired outcome for our customers.
It is vital to be at the forefront of automated change-over. High-speed is our specialty and a constant driver for our design. Versatility has always been a strength, which equates to equipment that can handle a very large range of product sizes and orientations. Our automation solutions have extended to Infeed De-banding, KDF Management and Upstream Product Orientation Technology, each of which was driven by needs within the industry that either didn’t exist, or what was available didn’t meet customer requirements.
It’s about seeing possibilities where others see limits. Our customer-focused design and innovative spirit can be the catalyst for achieving your future packaging goals.
This article was written for TWM by Rodney Fokkens, Aftermarket Manager, Edson.
