Monthly Archives: September 2017

Customer labeling and packaging demands are changing every day. We see customers using labeling more and more – and in many different stages from pre-production through retail packaging of finished goods.

Why is this? The use of clear and concise labels with key information and barcoding allows customers to track their work in process. By monitoring all the production stages they can gather and use data to improve their processes. We are also seeing labeling used in conjunction with data collection to generate pallet manifests and bills of lading. It all adds up to using data to increase efficiencies and profitability.

While the trend is present in most industries, processes and requirements vary greatly from industry to industry, so how this trend presents itself varies too. For example, the food industry is seeing a push for “clean labels,” making certain that consumer data on the label is easy to understand, clear, and concise. Other industries are looking for labels to reflect a product’s technical data or dimensional specifications. Labeling is used in the recycling industry to track materials and weights.

One example of where this comes into play is for our customer Laubscher Cheese, which was facing extremely short lead times and the need to adapt to many different items and pack sizes. Laubscher really needed to be able to quickly update the information displayed on label templates. Using the Fairbanks LabelBank/DataBank system, they could modify the information appearing on the label template extremely fast and with minimal pauses in production. This let them reduce or even eliminate their need to carry inventory of costly pre-printed labels. With the ability to customize and print on demand only the labels they need, they realized a very quick return on investment.

Laubscher also needed accurate collection of data that could flow easily into reports, so they adopted Fairbanks Ledger Web Reporting to show process flow, production output, yields, and more. LabelBank/DataBank and Ledger Web Reporting are also well suited to other industries. We have active customers in meat processing, dairy products, recycling, industrial manufacturing, and even government coin press operations, to name a few.

Customer labeling, packaging, and data collection needs are constantly changing and evolving. As they do, Fairbanks will continue to develop better ways to meet those needs. Whether it’s additional features to Ledger Web Reporting that make it easier to access information, or new modules for the LabelBank/DataBank software, Fairbanks’ goal is to make a customer’s labeling and data collection needs an efficient part of their process.

The mobile weighing market has changed dramatically over the past few years. Much of the change is driven by huge shipping companies and distribution centers that manage their throughput with pallets or skids, although any operation moving in the neighborhood of 20,000 pallets per week is looking for better mobile weighing operations. The reason is simple: a traditional floor scale takes up valuable floor space and in many manufacturing and warehouse environments floor space is at a premium.

In response, Fairbanks Scales Inc. recently released an entire line of mobile weighing products. Examples include the pallet jack scales – a scale that is integrated into a pallet jack; forklift scales, and scales for a wide variety of warehouse trucks.

Another recently developed option is the portable U-shaped floor scale, for example the Fairbanks’ Yellow Jacket Yellow Jacket U-Shaped floor scale. Unlike traditional floor scales, the U-shaped floor scale eliminates the need for floor scale ramps or a pit frame to sit the pallet or skid on the weighing platform.

Operators simply move the pallet into place over the scale, lower the pallet jack so the load is resting on the scale, capture the weight, and then raise the pallet jack to easily move the pallet or skid to its next location. This reduces weighing times by up to 50 percent by eliminating the time-consuming step of pulling the pallet jack out from underneath the pallet, which can be difficult with traditional ramped floor scales.

Another bonus is that the scale also eliminates the unsafe man-handling required to remove a pallet jack from underneath a pallet using a traditional floor scale with a ramp.

I can illustrate the point with a story about U.S. Toys, a Kansas City company that operates a 750,000 square foot distribution center. This might seem like an enormous amount of space. However, over time they started running out of room around their truck shipment preparation area. They had several traditional floor scales. Although the floor scales were effective, they weren’t efficient for their growing needs.

They liked the idea of the U-shaped floor scale design in Fairbanks’ Yellow Jacket scale. Within the first week after installation of the Yellow Jacket U-shaped floor scale, the U-shaped designed proved to be faster, easier to use, and safer in terms of ergonomics.