In today's competitive ink jet cartridge manufacturing market, labor costs and productivity are a make or break proposition. About a year ago, Epson Portland Inc. (EPI), located in Hillsboro, Ore., looked to automate its manual packaging processes to better compete on a global scale. Tera Kintz and Diana Davis, from EPI's ink cartridge manufacturing engineering division, were charged with making that happen.

The facility's original process involved manually packing a variety of cartridges, built for 16 different models, into corrugated cardboard boxes as the cartridges came off the production line. Packed boxes of cartridges rested for a predetermined period of time in a staging zone. Then they were manually removed, inspected, and replaced in the same corrugated containers for shipment to customers, or for further packaging and labeling elsewhere.

Kintz and Davis decided to automate the initial packaging of the cartridges, developing a hands-free system with an automated counter-diverter system that places the products in plastic containers before delivery to the staging area. The durable 19 × 15 × 13-inch containers (Flexcon Container, 973-467-3323) travel easily through the system—something that corrugated could not do as well.

"We went from a completely manual process, prior to the inspection and packaging, to complete automation at the initial process, improving our productivity by 13.5%," says Davis. "Also, implementing the tote system saves us $500,000 annually in labor costs alone because of reduced handling requirements for packaging personnel."

It was also important to Kintz and Davis that the containers be both stackable and nestable. When the containers are transferred to staging prior to inspection, they're stacked four-high on pallets with a lid only on the top layer to protect the exposed product. They needed containers that were sized for easy handling, yet could also be stacked to maximize vertical storage space while in use, and minimize storage needs when empty.

"We found that these totes were the best for our application because when they aren't in use, we can turn them around and nest them so they don't take up as much real estate," explains Kintz.

After the resting phase, the containers are transported to an inspection station, where the cartridges are removed, inspected, and packaged into out-bound corrugated containers. The now-empty reusable containers are nested together and recycled back to the beginning of the automated packaging process to be reused on a continuous rotation.