(Newswire.net — February 1, 2019) — There really isn’t a right or wrong answer to this question and it really depends more on how your current equipment is impacting packaging and operational efficiencies. Regardless of your product, streamlining your processes can help you save significant overhead costs and minimise any maintenance or repair disruptions. Improving your packaging efficiencies ultimately increases overall profits.
While new machines can offer a variety of capabilities, require less maintenance and operate faster, the initial cost for new equipment can be significant. While this may not be a financially viable option in the short term, you will realize long-term savings and value. The alternative to investing in new machines is to buy second hand or refurbished packaging equipment. This way business owners are still able to benefit from similar overhead cost reductions without committing to a large capital investment. Last option would be to repair but this may only be providing temporary relief and not offering optimal efficiency, only prolonging the inevitable replacement while spending more on repairs than the output or value of the machine.
In this post, we spoke with Shaun Bryce of Melbourne Packaging Supplies who provided a few important considerations to help you make this decision along with some guidance on how to evaluate your current packaging equipment’s current and future capabilities.
When to consider upgrading your current packaging equipment
When you start evaluating your options to either refurbish or replace your existing packaging equipment, consider the age of your equipment. With older machines you will find repairs become more frequent, spare and replacement parts more costly and older parts become scarce. Lack of ready availability replacement parts also leads to additional downtime which could be devastating to your production schedule and/or supply chain.
Consider how often these maintenance-related issues happen.Frequent repairs are costly and if you are spending more time on repairing than you should, the initial cost of refurbishment or new machines will be paid for in the long run. Machines that are more than fifteen years old simply cannot perform like the newer models in terms of speed and versatility.
New and improved materials and designs are constantly evolving, not updating machinery limits your ability to keep your package’s current and more importantly this also limits your ability to take advantage of the cost-savings associated with using the newer materials. Lastly, if you find that you are reworking orders due to machinery errors and suffering inefficient outdated processes it’s time to consider a new packaging solution.
Refurb Vs Repair Vs Buying new
- Refurb
When machines make frequent errors that result in necessary packaging rework, refurbishing equipment is often the most obvious option. The biggest benefit of refurbishing is cost. While this option is cheaper than replacing your machines, it can typically end up being costlier with more frequent repairs occurring long term and increased downtime in production as the machine is serviced/refurbished.
- Repair
The most desirable of all the options is repairing existing machinery as it’s typically the least expensive option and provided your machines are not very old and require parts to be sourced, repairs are faster to facilitate. A consistent and rigorous maintenance plan where monitoring of worn parts or potential damage can be found and fixed before machines are affected will help maintain the option of repairing. The downside to repairs is that they can be short-lived, frequently required and particularly with older machines repairs can cost much more than refurbishment or replacement.
- Buy New
While refurbishing and repairing are favourable options to keeping machinery performing, there are times when replacing the machinery with new equipment makes good business sense and you are able to update your packaging to match current market trends with ease.
New machines have a very low likelihood of needing repairs and have drastically lower maintenance costs than older machines. The most obvious downside is that new machines can be very expensive and while planning ahead for a period of downtime during the machine installation can mitigate your problems you still have the potential for increased man-hours required to train machine operators.
There are multiple factors to consider when deciding whether you want to refurb, repair or invest in new machinery. While we feel it’s important to remain flexible and adapt to changes in packaging trends we understand cost and time are perhaps the biggest considerations.