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After a busy day, when and if time permits, Kathy Dunn likes to unwind with jigsaw puzzles. They remind her of her contract packaging business, which is also something of a puzzle, “except the pieces are always moving,” says the owner of Wilsher Packaging, Bensenville, Ill.
In a 12-month period, Wilsher handles roughly 2.5 million pieces, typically assembled into multi-piece kits and displays. On any given day, 40 to 60 pallets of kits and displays, or 500 to 1000 seasonal POP displays, leave the docks of its 26,000 sq. ft. facility.
Even within Wilsher’s relatively defined sweet spot of pre-packing kits and assembling retail-ready displays, customer needs are diverse, requiring a modular approach to physical assets. “We can set-up a pack-out line and move it in an instant,” Dunn says.
Continually changing products and schedules requires a lot of flexibility and lots of movement on the floor. Aside from some stationary or bay-type operations for industrial assemblies (spools for wire products; corrugated forms, precast concrete), most lines are set-up for workers picking, packing and placing retail items, kits and displays from continuously moving conveyors.
For example, multipacks of Sprayway-brand glass cleaner and related household products are packed year-round for warehouse stores. These are manually placed on a conveyor, run through a Texwrap automatic L-bar sealer and Eastey automatic shrink tunnel system; stacked on corrugated printed trays; and loaded into displays, assembled concurrently. (See sidebar, “Teamwork, humor and greener film.”)
Wilsher also serves seasonal demand, as was the case during a fall visit by Contract Packaging. These included two Christmas gift packs bound for major retail chains: one kit incorporating a package of household-brand ground coffee, mug and biscotti treats bagged, tagged and tied; and a boxed cocoa-for-two kit with cocoa mix, salted caramel, toasted marshmallow and two mugs. All the components and packages arrive from the customer, and, says Dunn, “when we get a phone call that 8 truckloads are coming in for us, we say ‘okay!’ and start moving our lines in place.”
Growing with Wilton Brands
Similar to the above examples of retail co-packing work, Wilsher has been setting up lines to pack for year-round and seasonal products for Wilton Brands (www.wilton.com
), Woodridge, IL., a leader in various categories of cookware and bakeware, and the largest food- and paper-crafting company in a highly fragmented crafts industry.
Wilton’s roughly 28,000 SKUs are sold worldwide to big-box retailers such as Walmart and arts & crafts retailers such as Michaels Stores. Products carry Wilton’s own brands, which include Wilton cake and food decorating kits, Copco tea kettles and EK Success crafts; or alternately carry labels including Martha Stewart Crafts, Disney, Marvel, Nickelodeon, Sesame Street, Warner Brothers, or American Girl Crafts, via licensing agreements.
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