Every good fulfilment strategy now requires automated, right-sized packaging for every product. David Priestman attended a customer innovation day in Umbria, Italy, to see how things should be done.
“There should be no excuses in designing packaging machinery – go beyond limits,” enthused Francesco Ponti (pictured below), the exuberant CEO of CMC Packaging Automation at the company’s annual CID event in delightful Citta di Castello, near Perugia. His company are advocates of utilising fully-automated packaging technology and claim to be the number one in packaging ecommerce machine supplies globally.
CMC is a family company, having been founded by Francesco’s father Giuseppe in 1980. Like the world’s biggest online retailer (who do not need the publicity of being named here!) CMC grew from garage to global in a generation. “We’re in a very good position,” says the open and good-natured Ponti. “We learn from our customers what the market needs and try to make them happy. We are one of the best in R&D and the time-to-market of new product launches. Fit the box around the product and don’t ship air!”
No Fillings
The company has offices in the UK, Germany and Netherlands, as well as 3 further sites in Italy and facilities in the USA in Georgia, North Carolina and Ohio. The Cleveland factory makes cardboard, which helps CMC to control the price of consumable materials supplied to customers and give confidence in the total cost of ownership estimates.
The North American market is huge for CMC, accounting for 58% of revenue, thanks in no small part, I understand, to that other company that started in a garage. It has 600 employees, 600 customers and partners, over 600 patents and more than 3000 systems have been installed so far. Turnover has trebled in the last seven years to €157m. Investment from KKR has enabled this growth, facilitating a succession of new machine launches, roughly one per year.
Optimize Outbound
The newest machines in the range include ‘Genesys’ (with Combo and Compact variants) for dynamic packing of multiple items regardless of shape and size into tote boxes without pre-consolidation; ‘Cartonwrap’ (plus XL and duo versions) for ecommerce 3D packing into unique, optimised cardboard boxes without void fillers; ‘Paper-Pro’ for bagging into perfect-size paper bags; ’Nexus’ for 3PL or retail use alongside AMRs and carousel technology.
‘Box first’ or ‘box last’ is often the choice in packaging and ecommerce operations. ‘Box first’ is for on-demand packing, created for each specific order, used in conjunction with an ASRS or pick-to-light system. ‘Box last’ is a ‘zero touch’ fully-automated operation fed by conveyors from inbound.
DHL Brazil’s Luiz Proenca is managing warehouse operations for customers including Adidas. Migrating from plastic to paper packaging is part of a switch to a ‘circular economy’ approach. Speaking at CID he said, “the challenge for us is in handling wide variations in ecommerce packaging sizes in the same distribution centre, combined with the need for speed and under 24-hour deliveries. Customer experience is important.”
CMC’s Paper-Pro machine has replaced twenty-four manual packing stations in his warehouse. It meets the sustainability targets due to the 100% recyclability of packaging materials. “The machine is fast, with no downtime,” Proenca says. “It’s also easy to operate with a low learning curve. ‘Plug and play’ installation enabled us to connect it to our conveyors in a compact layout. We’ve standardised our parcels, can guarantee the quality of input packaging materials, creating package consistency and reducing void space. Scope, plan, implement, maintain was our mantra.”
Buffer Your Tote
Materials handling system providers like Element Logic are integrating CMC GeneSys machines with ASRS like the AutoStore, plus adding the middleware and software. Ane Furu, VP of Product Management discussed a project for the German lab equipment firm Avantor, in which small parts are stored in the ASRS, then delivered to the pick station. Vary-Totes are used to pack items which are fed into the GeneSys by conveyor.
“It’s a pick and pack process with zero-touch,” she says. “We have halved manually packed box numbers, saving 30,000kg of carbon weight per annum.” The GeneSys is 70% faster than manual operations. “It’s not a question of whether to automate,” Furu adds, “but how. Framing the problem is often more important than solving it. Orchestration is the key.”
Leveraging right-sized packaging is the challenge and Francesco Ponti unveiled new product launches at CID. “Covid caused a boom in ecommerce automation, with big investment,” he told me. “But growth has slowed, there is less greenfield development at the moment, but more brownfield projects to automate DCs. Growth in the sector is 8%, which is still super good!
Entry-Level Solutions
“The problem with brownfield DCs is they’re normally at 80% capacity and can’t stop operations during a transition to new systems. So we adapt to find new solutions for integrators: compact, plug & play and standalone.” Ponti estimates there are 1300 new fulfilment centres built globally per year. These suit advanced packaging automation systems. There are an estimated 15000 brownfield warehouse sites. CMC estimates that 5% of them will be automated in the next 5 years.
CMC has therefore launched new short and compact machines, including the ‘CartonWrap Duo’ (43 sq.m), ‘GeneSys Compact’ (36 sq.m) and ‘GeneSys Prima’ (under 30 sq.m). These create boxes on demand based on customer data and use cardboard flaps to close the lid without a separate lid-fitting process. There is no trimming of waste cardboard needed as it is used as a filler. The flaps act like a spring to close and make the box strong to protect items.
The ‘Super Vertical’ (pictured above) drew special attention. Just 3m x 3m x 3m it is a bagging machine that uses flexible or semi-rigid, padded bags. It will be able to use rigid boxes too shortly. The bag or box size is determined by scanning the item. The machine can fill 500 bags per hour, single or multi-item, label, print and apply to the envelope. This clever product needs just one day to install, can be placed up against a wall or on a mezzanine and is ideal for 3PLs. Two manual packing stations represent the same space as one Super Vertical machine.
“Carton paper, corrugated paper, bubble or pressure-resistant paper are all cheaper than boxes,” Ponti concludes, “so envelopes are the future because couriers are overtaking postal operators and winning the postal market.” Limitless customer opportunities lay ahead.