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Ready Seal wraps up its palletizing challenges

To meet rapid business growth, this maker of stains and sealants adds new conveyors and automated wrappers, improving its speed and handling efficiency.

3. Pallets are wrapped at rates of 18 RPM, or a throughput of 50 to 65 pallets/hr.
3. Pallets are wrapped at rates of 18 RPM, or a throughput of 50 to 65 pallets/hr.

For many of us around the country, winter can’t end soon enough. Beside ushering in warmer weather, spring gives us a chance to tackle some much-needed outdoor projects. Enter Ready Seal Inc.

The Lewisville, TX, company is a privately-held manufacturer of penetrating stains and sealants used in the treatment of woods in decks, outer walls, fences and other exposed locations. In the 25 years since it was founded, this family-owned Texas company has grown steadily from a local firm selling to contractors into a major supplier of its products across North America, as well as to the Caribbean market area and to locales as far away as Fiji.

“We make one product,” says Mark Mauldin, Ready Seal VP. “It is a combined stain and sealant that penetrates wood and provides a longer-lasting color and protective coating than products remaining on the wood surface. The product is available in a range of colors, and its durability and ease of application have been the source of our success.”

Though it began small, Mauldin reports that Ready Seal has experienced major sales growth in recent years—56% in 2016, 40% in 2017, and a projected 100% growth for 2018. This brings benefits to the company, but challenges to the company’s entire production operation. This is especially true at the end of the production line, where products need to be moved immediately, either being palletized for immediate shipment or for storage while awaiting later shipment.

“Our biggest need was for speed at the end of the line,” Mauldin says, “and automation was going to provide that.”

Keeps product moving

Product comes off the end of the Ready Seal production lines packaged in either 5-gal buckets or 1-gal pails. The company ships both unit pallet loads of product, or mixed pallets containing both sizes. Depending on existing orders waiting to be filled, pallet loads of product might go directly to a stretch wrapper for preparation for immediate shipping, or be wrapped for storage and later shipping.

In its early days, Ready Seal built pallets and then moved them to an area where they were secured by being wrapped by hand. This was a labor-intensive process, both in the hand wrapping but also in moving unsecured loads of buckets and cartons of product to the palletizing area and then transporting them by forklift to the relevant shipping or storage area some distance away. Hand wrapping also provided minimal film stretch, meaning loads ready for shipping were not as solid as they would be if secured with machine-stretched film.

“That was our second need,” Mauldin says, “to secure loads more effectively to prevent damage during shipping.”

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