Industry Case Studies

Here are some elceted case studies form the Material Handling & Packaging industries.

GILLETTE

Need: Gillette was looking for a safe, but industrially durable way to transport supplies in their facility.

Solution: Custom stations with fixed ball transfer units, facilitates handling and transfer of heavy items, such as large boxes of blades & razors.

BLAIR CORPORATION

Need: Blair Corporation needed more than 80 mobile stations integrated with its new high speed sorting and conveying system.

Solution: After producing a prototype workstation from an initial concept drawing, Blair’s Fulfillment Project Team-which included experienced packing operators from the fulfillment floor-traveled to Production Basics’ manufacturing facility to evaluate the station with the product engineering department. Blair’s team went through an actual fulfillment process for the purpose of evaluating the ergonomic features, determining how practical the workstation was for the tasks, discovering which features were most useful, providing feedback for improvements. The final product materialized as a fully custom packaging and fulfillment workstation integrated with ergonomic and organizational features:

  • Hand crank worksurface height accommodates multiple operators and shifts.
  • The heavy gauge steel construction and stainless steel worksurface was designed to withstand Blair’s demanding packaging schedule.
  • V-grooved casters sit upon floor tracks to easily move station to merchandise drop shoots with minimal physical effort.
  • Organizational accessories such as shelves with adjustable dividers help sort catalogs and literature inserts, and a bin rail suspends standard plastic bins for easy storage of small office and incidental supplies.
  • To keep the worksurface uncluttered, a tape machine platform stores tape within operator reach, yet out of the way of packaged boxes and merchandise.
  • A unique surface cutout gulps trash and collects it underneath the work area.

NORTON ST GOBAIN

Need: Workstations that would protect their products and be compatible with a conveyor system.

Solution: Workstations were integrated with conveyors for more efficient product handling. Industrial workstation featured a shared shelf for easy product transfer between operators. The customer also requested stainless steel worksurfaces to protect the work benches from damage by ceramic products.

NOKIA

Need: Nokia wanted to create a 'pack-line' that would streamline the fulfillment process for their primary cell phone fulfillment center in North America. Operator tasks along this line include testing, cleaning, packaging, weighing and shipping cell phones to a distribution center.

Solution: 50 custom flow rack and assembly cell stations with flow rack shelving that included integrated plastic skate wheels that supported Nokia’s light products. A shallow worksurface reduced operator reach and made it easy for operators to access products and supplies traveling on the flow rack.