It is not often that a company is able to gain significant savings from something that is normally just thrown away. That is the case, however, with Wagner Spray Tech Corporation. The well-known maker of the Wagner painting products has switched the materials used to protect sprayers during shipment from corrugated inserts to molded foam packaging (Sealed Air Corp., 201-712-7000).

The move to foam dunnage has reduced materials costs, saved labor, increased productivity and speed through the packaging area, and decreased dramatically the storage space needed for dunnage.

Wagner's Minneapolis, Minn. manufacturing facility makes eight models of professional sprayers and four consumer models. About 500 cartons daily pass through the packaging lines. The lines change over about five times each day to accommodate the various models being manufactured.

Under the old system, die-cut corrugated was brought from storage and was used to cushion items placed within the shipping cartons. As many as three people were required per packaging line to fold, staple and fit up to seven pieces of corrugated around each sprayer product.

The corrugated dunnage also occupied 50 pallet positions of storage. Each time the line changed, a lift truck would be required to take several active pallets of unused corrugated back to storage and then retrieve the corrugated required for the next model to be run.

'Half of the lift driver's day was spent moving cardboard back and forth,' says Wade Isaacson, manufacturing engineering manager. 'Now we only have two pallets holding tanks of chemicals for the foam on each packaging line, so we have a total of six pallets instead of 50.'

With the new system, packing each paint sprayer requires from two to four molded pieces of dense, high-performance foam. This foam dunnage is created directly within the packaging line.

To begin the process, a worker selects the required molds for the currently running product from the 40 molds stored line-side. These are placed into a molding wheel that automatically indexes to keep current work at the access position. The worker then injects chemical foam into a plastic bag. The foam begins to expand immediately. The bag is then placed into the mold so that as the foam expands, it acquires the mold's shape and quickly hardens. When complete, the now-fitted bag is removed and placed around the product inside the shipping carton.

The new packaging process is more cost-effective and requires 50% less labor. Since the foam is produced only on demand to custom dimensions, it eliminates wasted corrugated when product designs change.

'It has been a perfect fit for our products,' adds Isaacson, 'and we have saved significantly on our materials costs.'

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