In-house box making system from Autobox

Numatic International, based in Chard, Somerset, is perhaps best known for the Henry vacuum cleaner, although the company offers over 4000 industrial cleaning products in total.

Numatic International , based in Chard, Somerset, is perhaps best known for the Henry vacuum cleaner, although the company offers over 4000 industrial cleaning products in total.

Many of these are built to order, requiring a vast range of box sizes.

Stocking 100's of different box sizes especially for lower volume products, became an issue for the Company as it looked to progressively reduce inventory levels and adopt wherever possible, Real "Just In Time" manufacturing systems.

To better service the demand, Numatic International decided to manufacture in house, their own boxes for lower volume and special products.

For this side of the business, instead of stocking finished boxes, the Company now purchases one standard stock size of sheet corrugated board, helping to reduce inventory levels and factory storage space.

Printed or plain boxes for high volume products such as the 'Henry' continue to be out sourced.

Autobox of Leighton Buzzard UK were chosen to supply a complete box making system.

A Model SC164 Slitter is used to cut correct sized blanks from the stock corrugated sheet.

A Model Boxmaker 1070 is then used to slot and crease the blanks ready for finishing either with a hot melt glue gun or pneumatic stapler, also supplied by Autobox.

The 1070 stores frequently used box sizes in the machine memory or can be quickly programmed to produce a new box size or style.

It can be changed to produce a different sized box in less than 1 minute and the whole system requires just one person to operate.

Comments Andrew Smith - Manufacturing Manager at Numatic International "Everyone loves the Autobox system".

"It is a great success and amazingly easy to operate".

"Not only are we using it to service our day to day production requirements, our RandD Team use it to prove packaging designs for new products".

"We have achieved our objectives of reducing packaging costs and inventory levels as well as freeing up valuable storage space for other uses".

"Autobox manufacture a wide range of box making systems aimed at End Users.

Machines are used across many industries throughout the world.

They can be operated by unskilled labour and previous experience of box making is not necessary.

In house box manufacture provides costs savings, reduces inventory levels and storage space requirements.

It is ideally suited for companies using a large range of box sizes and styles or those operating "Just in time" or "Lean manufacturing" processes.

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