Case Study: Packing Automation Lifted Output 71% Without Touching the Cooking Line
Not every upgrade needs a new production line. This Vietnamese milk candy producer had adequate cooking and forming capacity and a chronic bottleneck further downstream: packing was manual, inconsistent and the largest labour cost in the plant.
The bottleneck, quantified
Before the upgrade the plant packed at roughly 380 pieces per minute across two shifts, with quality complaints about sealing defects and uneven wrap tightness. Every additional kilo of cooking capacity was wasted because the packing floor could not absorb it.
| Measure | Before (manual) | After (three-servo system) |
|---|---|---|
| Packing speed | ≈380 pcs/min | ≈650 pcs/min |
| Packing-floor labour | Baseline | −50% |
| Sealing defects | Recurring complaints | Reduced to near zero |
| Product size changeover | Mechanical adjustment, ~2 hours | Touchscreen parameter change, ~15 min |
| Film waste at start-up | High | Low, integrated film control |
Why three servos matter in practice
Three independently controlled servo axes let the feeding tray, film feed and sealing jaws each follow their own motion profile. The practical benefits are gentle handling of soft candy — no deformation before wrapping — and bag length set from the control panel rather than by changing mechanical gears. For a factory running several product sizes, that changeover difference alone justifies the specification.
What stayed the same
The cooking and forming equipment was untouched and remains in daily use. This is the point of bottleneck analysis before capital spending: the cheapest capacity is often the capacity you already own but cannot ship.
Note — Before ordering new cooking equipment, measure your packing throughput. If it is below your cooking capacity, you are buying more of the wrong thing.
How to check whether packing is your bottleneck
- Compare hourly output at the end of cooking with hourly output at the end of packing
- Count labour cost per shift on the packing floor specifically
- Log packing defects by type — sealing, alignment, wrap tightness
- Measure changeover time between product sizes
- Check whether cooking uptime is limited by waiting for the packing line
If two or more of these point at packing, an automated feeding and wrapping system will pay back faster than additional upstream capacity.