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Case taping vastly improved

Interruptions to the packaging process are practically a thing of the past at Kent Quality Foods—and employee morale is way up—since a switch in case taping was made.

Grand Rapids, MI-based Kent Quality Foods (KQF) has supplied national restaurant chains, food service companies, broad line distributors, and the further processing industry with a variety of frankfurters, sausages, and specialty meats since 1967. The firm relies on properly functioning packaging equipment to ensure finished goods are packed properly and ready to enter their distribution chains. When KQF started to recognize too many cases were leaving the case packing area poorly sealed or untaped, it was time for a closer look at the case sealing system.

Reworking cases was costing the company valuable time and money. Not to mention the waste stemming from resealing cases and throwing away unusable rolls of tape.

The packaging problems were also creating tension on the plant floor. “There was a high level of frustration in the production teams from the constant interruption in flow due to case sealing problems,” says Jason Austin, Purchasing Manager at KQF. “It was typical for an operator to have to literally run down case taping problems, as they often didn’t show up until poorly sealed cases affected palletizing.”

Austin set out to find a better way to securely seal cases and eliminate the unscheduled downtime that was causing negativity on the plant floor. “If there’s a problem that everyone knows about, you have to address it or it starts to affect morale. At KQF, we like to say, ‘Don’t walk by a problem,’” explained Austin.

In March 2014, Austin worked with Jonn Belding, a sales engineer with Technical Packaging Systems (TPS)—a distributor of Shurtape products—to find options that would resolve the company’s case sealing issues and increase productivity.

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