Bottle Unscrambler under utilization throughout the bottling industry

After visiting more than one hundred manufacturing facilities I’m always surprised by the lack of bottle unscramblers being used in bottling and packaging production lines

After asking if they would consider adding a bottle unscrambler most of the times I’m met with resistant with this claims:

1. We have too many bottles, do too many changeovers
2. Changeovers would take too long
3. It’s a large investment
4. I don’t have space
   
   
   

Before disregarding this idea I would argue:

1. We have too many bottles, do too many changeovers:

A good bottle unscrambler would changeover faster than a capper and having your bottles being fed by a machine and not a human will increase your production offsetting x 10 cost of setup

       2.Changeovers would take too long

If you document your changeovers and use the indicators changeover should take no more than 10-15 minutes

       3.It’s a large investment

If you have one person working 8 hours per day feeding bottles a 35K bottles unscrambler would pay for itself in 1.5 years (just on labor costs), if you have 2 persons the payoff is less than 9 months

        4. I don’t have space

There are some places where you can simply not add any more equipment, otherwise the effort to put in the machine will pay for it self quickly

If you are running production at least 30 hours per week at 30 bpm or more you should seriously consider adding a bottle unscrambler to your production line, not only will you save in labor costs but your production will increase by being more efficient on your bottle feeding. 

Bottle unscramblers don’t go to the restroom, chat with their buddies or work slower because of a bad hangover.

One of my favorite manufacturing quotes by Henry Ford:

"If you need a machine and don't buy it, you will ultimately find that you have paid for it and don't have it."