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An essential part of running any business successfully is offering competitive wages. You want to attract the best talent and keep them happy in your employment. But that money has to come from somewhere. Either you have to earn more or cut costs. Ideally, you can do both. One way to do that is with automation.
It makes repetitive tasks quicker and more efficient, and frees your workers to apply their energies to more complex, engaging, and specialized tasks. All of this benefits your business on both the front and back end, which you can then pass down to your employees. This is how pallet automation and higher wages work. To harness these benefits for your pallet manufacturing business means implementing pallet automation.
Automation involves using technology to handle specific tasks that human laborers typically handle. These tools can include automated hardware and software alike. A pallet manufacturing business can implement such tools in many ways to improve operational efficiency and increase output. Nearly every aspect of day-to-day operations in a pallet manufacturing business can incorporate automation.
A pallet warehouse, for example, can implement automated racking systems, automatic pallet conveyers, and robotic palletizers to store, sort, retrieve, and package pallets. This can reduce operating expenses, increase productivity, and improve ROI. It can also reduce errors and injuries.
Automated software can also assist with the administrative end of pallet business management, from human resources to accounts receivable. Using AI in your analytics and marketing, for example, can optimize your efforts and thereby maximize your return on investment in those areas as well.
It’s easy to say that automation can then allow you to reduce your reliance on a human workforce, but it can also help you get more out of the workforce you maintain. It can even help you attract and retain a more specialized, trained, skilled, and experienced workforce that can help you use these automated tools more effectively. Ultimately, this can promote faster, greater, and more sustainable business expansion and growth. With all the additional savings and income this generates, you’ll be able to pay these workers more for their invaluable contributions.
The benefits of pallet automation cover almost every aspect of your business, from labor concerns to inventory matters to sales and finance management. Thanks to these benefits, higher wages are a natural and attainable outcome.
One of the most obvious pallet automation benefits is that it lessens your dependence on physical labor to perform specific tasks, particularly repetitive tasks. Using machines and software to perform simple tasks formerly relegated to human workers allows you to strategically reallocate those team members to more critical components of your operation. It also protects your business from potential labor shortages.
Let’s face it: When it comes to most menial tasks like pallet wrapping or inventory storage and retrieval, machines work faster and more efficiently than people. This allows you to increase your output, which, in turn, allows you to work on growing your business.
Increased output means you can fulfill orders faster, which can get you paid faster. It can also make you more competitive in the marketplace, bringing you more customers and increasing customer retention. This can lead to faster and more sustainable business expansion, increasing your workforce and the competitive wages you can pay them.
Even one mistake can cost a business inordinately. An order can be sent out wrong and needs replacing, a pallet can get damaged, or, even worse, an employee can get hurt. Mistakes can even cause a business to lose customers. Pallet automation can help minimize those risks.
For example, using digital readers and SKU codes for inventory management allows you to keep a better track of what is coming in, going out, and on hand at any given moment. This nearly eliminates the possibility of human error in that area.
This is one way to pair the benefits of automation and human labor for maximum rewards for everyone. It takes human beings to operate those readers; training your inventory team to do so can come with a pay bump for them. You can easily cover this raise with the money you’re saving by having fewer mistakes in your inventory operations.
Manufacturing businesses can lose much money to waste, and pallet manufacturing businesses are no exception. For example, inconsistent pallet stacking can lead to significant inefficiencies like wasted storage space and potential product damage, which costs you money. Robotic palletizers are not subject to the dangers of fatigue, inconsistency, and error like manual laborers. They produce precise and consistent results that you can count on for maximum storage efficiency and consistent order fulfillment.
This, in turn, allows you to avoid the need for larger storage facilities and the associated increase in warehousing costs. By making the best use of your existing space, you reduce your warehousing costs, allowing you to pay your human workforce more for their contributions to your success.
Many injuries occur as a result of performing repetitive tasks. For example, hours sitting in front of a computer managing the books can lead to medical issues like lower back pain, eye strain, and carpal tunnel syndrome. This can cause employees to miss valuable work time, and their absences can cost you money. Sometimes, it can even cost you workers' compensation charges to cover their medical bills.
Bookkeeping software, however, can take care of much of this work, allowing your bookkeepers to spend fewer hours sitting at their desks. It also allows you to apply those workers’ expertise to analyze and optimize your finances, saving you money. You can pay these workers more from this savings for making more lucrative use of their specialized talents.
Another example can be seen in the warehouse where the physical demands of hoisting and hauling heavy boxes can lead to sprains, strains, and other musculoskeletal injuries. Not only can these lead to higher workers' compensation costs, but they can also result in greater absenteeism and higher insurance costs. Taking as much of the heavy physical load off of your manual laborers and creating a safer working environment with the help of tools like automated pallet racking and conveyor systems saves you money that you can then give back to your workers in the form of higher wages.
The physical demands of manual palletization can lead to higher turnover rates in the pallet industry than in other sectors. This turnover increases recruiting, onboarding, and training costs for new workers. It can also disrupt workflows, causing delays and other problems fulfilling production targets.
By implementing robotic palletizers, you reduce the strain on your human workforce, allowing them to apply their talents and efforts more economically and productively. It can also improve employee satisfaction and, therefore, retention. It can also help ensure more steady output during such industry setbacks as labor shortages.
Better employee satisfaction, retention, and allocation of human resources can all save you money that you can then apply toward higher wages for those workers. What’s more, higher employee morale can also increase their productivity, earning you more money from your human workforce as well as your automated resources, which you can then pass down to those workers.
According to a Fastmarkets report, since the pandemic, wages in the pallet industry have increased faster than those in the overall manufacturing sector, growing 30% versus 18% between March 2020 and September 2023. The report cites pallet automation as one of the two key drivers of this outpaced wage increase, the other being labor shortages.
Clearly, pallet automation goes hand-in-hand with cost-cutting and cost-savings. You can then apply some of these savings toward higher wages for your loyal workers.
Another key part of running a successful pallet manufacturing business is effective marketing. For help optimizing, elevating, and even automating your marketing efforts, contact Pallet Company Marketing today.
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