Nothing but Net: 5 Benefits of SLAM Systems in your eCommerce Warehouse

Tension Team on February 7, 2023

SLAM (Scan, Label, Apply, Manifest) systems are powerful tools for eCommerce and warehouse operations, offering benefits like reduced labor costs, improved safety, and increased package throughput. By automating repetitive tasks, optimizing shipping rates, and consolidating workstations, SLAM systems streamline order fulfillment while boosting accuracy and efficiency. Tension Packaging & Automation provides tailored solutions to help you transform your operations into a cost-saving, high-performing success.

SLAM systems, or SCAN, LABEL, APPLY, MANIFEST systems, offer eCommerce order fulfillment centers and warehouses a means to reduce labor costs (in addition to several other benefits). 
 

Located in the last 100 feet of the order fulfillment process, a SLAM label applicator system can offer a variety of benefits to an eCommerce and order fulfillment center, warehouse or B2B shipping facility (including some that positively affect your bottom line or net profits!).

Automating Repetitive Tasks

A SLAM line can help optimize labor in your warehouse by automating many of the tasks associated with order fulfillment.

By automating repetitive labor tasks, your labor force is free to do job tasks that may be of greater interest to them – improving associate satisfaction and potentially team dynamics.

From a cost perspective, task automation can lead to reduced labor costs by a factor of four!

Improve Warehouse Safety

Automation can help improve safety in order fulfillment operations just by automating some of the repetitive tasks that pose a risk to workers. This is a no-brainer when you consider the numbers:

A Positive Ratio: Along with improved safety comes improved associate satisfaction – a win-win for all involved in your operations of order fulfillment services.

Increased Packaging Throughput

A great benefit of a SLAM system is that it can drive accuracy and speed, ultimately leading to higher package throughput. With a SLAM system in place, order accuracy is built into the process.

SLAM lines feature quality checks throughout the process such as scanning an LPN (license plate number) barcode on the carton or package to ensure that it is attached directly to the proper package.

Once the Print & Apply label applicator is attached, the LPN barcode and shipping label are scanned to verify the correct package is going to the correct customer.

Additional options that can be included in the SLAM line include a scale and DIM system with integrated rate shopping to save on shipping cost. This all-in-one system compares the actual parcel weight with the expected weight sorts packages to the correct shipping carrier chute using the package barcode. This all can be done at a rate of 15 – 25 packages per minute with accuracy.

Find Low Shipping and Reduced Carrier Rates 

SLAM systems can also help reduce shipping costs by having the correct weight and DIM of the box packaging or bag. Fast shipping rate shopping software helps to save on carrier costs and optimize order fulfillment.

Additionally, right-sized automated packaging equipment, such as Tension’s HPS-300 variable length packaging system, can reduce excess package waste and help reduce shipping costs by up to 18% when the package is rate shopped on your SLAM line. 

With the option of adding sortation to your line, this reduces labor costs when compared to manual package sorting to different carriers and service levels.

Consolidated Workstations

Another benefit of SLAM systems is that they can help consolidate shipping workstations. With a SLAM system in place, there is no need for multiple shipping stations by carrier.

All orders can be sorted at the end of the fulfillment process and then shipped out from one central location. This consolidation can lead to a 50% reduction in shipping stations, freeing up more space in the warehouse for production and inventory storage.

Contact Us

From increased throughput to reduced labor costs, SLAM systems can offer a multitude of advantages to an eCommerce fulfillment services or warehouse operation.

Looking for ways to improve your operational efficiency and net profits? Consider investing in a system that is sure to be a SLAM dunk for your organization.

Tension offers a full suite of automated packaging equipment including automated bagging machines, conveyor systems, sorters, print and apply labelers and more. Contact an expert at Tension to discuss today.

How a Sortation System Can Optimize Your Order Fulfillment Services

Tension Team on January 18, 2023

The Role of Sortation Systems in Optimizing Order Fulfillment Services

The eCommerce industry is face paced, featuring order fulfillment as a critical factor of customer satisfaction. To meet customer demands and expectations, warehouses are increasingly turning to automated sortation systems to optimize their order fulfillment process.

When it comes to shipping, fast is no longer fast enough. Consumers who were impressed with Amazon’s two-day shipping now want shorter delivery times and lower shipping charges. Twenty-minute delivery windows may soon be the new standard for delivery times as adopters of quick commerce (Q-Commerce) gain traction in the grocery segment, which could soon expand to other retail industries. A recent study also revealed that 66% of online shoppers had abandoned their carts because of shipping costs.

Creating Operational Efficiencies with Sortation

As consumers want more for less, warehouses, distribution centers and order fulfillment operations are looking for ways to be more productive. One way to offer these efficiencies is through sortation systems for order fulfillment.

Items that have been packaged on our automated packaging equipment , travels to the sorter when the package is identified and diverted with the assistance of our TensionCONNECTTM software.

How a Sortation System Can Help Your Fulfillment Operations

Sortation systems can help optimize your order fulfillment operation by improving order accuracy and speed, reducing labor costs, and ensuring versatility and use of warehouse space. By automating the sorting process, you can process a high volume of orders with minimal resources and reduce the chances of errors occurring during the fulfillment process.

Benefits to using sortation systems in your order fulfillment operations include:

  • Increased Speed: With routing that is completed in a fraction of the time compared to a manual process, a sortation system can help drastically improve item sorting rates.  
  • Improved Accuracy: A scanner automatically assigns the package to the correct carrier so your staff doesn’t have to. 
  • Decreased Labor Costs: With the added efficiencies a sortation system can provide, your staff can focus on other high-skilled areas that need their expertise. 
  • Better Use of Valuable Warehouse Space: Save floor space with a sophisticated, flexible design tailor-made for tight warehouses. 
  • Enhanced Versatility: Our sorters can handle nearly every size, shape and weight, including apparel, shoes, jewelry, pharmaceuticals, CDs, mail, books and small parcels.

What to Consider When Choosing a Sortation System

When choosing a sortation system for order fulfillment, several factors must be taken into consideration, including the type of products being sorted, the layout of the warehouse, budget, and ROI. These can have an impact on which sortation systems work best for your order fulfillment. Choosing the right sortation system for order fulfillment can greatly enhance efficiency, accuracy, and customer satisfaction, making it a critical decision for any warehouse or distribution center.

Choose Sortation Systems Designed to Grow With You

Compact and adjustable, our sortation system fits into small or large spaces, and can adjust to different modes or fulfillment channels. This system is also designed to grow in capacity, and is flexible enough to handle a changing product mix.

We work in an environment where the only constant is change. It’s an environment where responding to a more demanding customer is vital to your business. With increased fulfillment demands, an automated sortation system may just be the key to lasting success.

Contact Tension

Tension Packaging & Automation is a leader in complete packaging and automation solutions for the eCommerce and pharmacy automation industries. Our line of packaging equipment seamlessly integrates with sortation systems and related software to help rate-shop and select the best carrier at the best price.

Contact Tension today to discuss how we can help set up your eCommerce or pharmacy order fulfillment operation for success with the help of our sortation systems.

Simplified Package Shipping Solutions from the USPS Part 2: UPS Mail Innovations and USPS Informed Delivery for Packages

Tension Team on September 27, 2022

USPS and UPS offer innovative solutions like UPS Mail Innovations® and Informed Delivery® to help businesses streamline eCommerce shipping. UPS Mail Innovations reduces touchpoints and costs by combining UPS’s national network with USPS’s last-mile delivery, while Informed Delivery provides email previews of mail and packages, creating new marketing opportunities with high engagement rates. Together, these programs enhance operational efficiency and customer communication, supporting businesses in meeting rising eCommerce demands.

In our previous post, we explored USPS Connect™ its convenient shipping and return services. Now, let’s turn our attention to some additional simplified package shipping solutions.
 

The United States Postal Service (USPS) claims it’s “delivering for America with innovative solutions for businesses.” Informed Delivery® by USPS and UPS Mail Innovations® make good on that promise.

Both programs help businesses keep pace with the astonishing rise in eCommerce shipping by solving a handful of operational challenges.

What is UPS Mail Innovations?

UPS Mail Innovations is a collaborative program between USPS and UPS to deliver parcels more efficiently. Shipping solutions relying on traditional USPS mailing methods typically see a parcel travel through six separate touchpoints along its journey. By integrating with UPS and leveraging its national network of processing facilities and technology, that number is slashed. UPS handles the heavy lifting—long transits, labeling and, sorting of qualified mail—before dropping mail pieces at a USPS facility for last-mile delivery.

The streamlined solution offers speed and lowers costs. Those aren’t the only benefits, though. Today, 20% of merchants, including pharmaceuticals and healthcare providers, use the service. With the ability to brand, personalize and even include bounce-back incentives, the labels become another important piece of the marketing toolkit.

Convenience can’t be underscored either. Merchants can drop off packages at any UPS store, 24-hour service kiosk*, or rapid drop-off station. And returns are just as simple with easy-to-use, prepaid labels.

What is Informed Delivery?

Informed Delivery by USPS has been around for a few years—enough time to realize the benefits are real. The free service provides recipients an email preview of their mail before it arrives. But the real upside to this shipping solution belongs to those businesses that capitalize upon it.

Informed Delivery email open rates are strong at 63%, meaning more than half of direct mail pieces receive multiple impressions across channels. Shippers can use Informed Delivery to enrich an existing marketing campaign—at no additional cost. What’s more, they have access to a digital dashboard sharing important metrics like click-through and open rates. Great for A/B testing, it can help businesses understand what messaging resonates.

And it’s about to get better. Until now, Informed Delivery only pertained to letters, but package campaigns are coming soon.

Contact us to discuss how we can enhance your operations in tandem with these USPS offerings.

About Tension

Tension Packaging & Automation is a leader in complete packaging and automation solutions for the eCommerce and pharmacy automation industries. Our line of packaging equipment seamlessly integrates with transportation management systems (TMS) with options for weight verification, rate shopping, and sorting to multiple carriers (e.g., USPS) and service levels — contact us to get started.

The Perfect Fit Part 1, Sustainable Packaging Solutions

Tension Team on June 21, 2022

Sustainability is a growing priority, with 72% of Americans more likely to repurchase from brands that ship sustainably. Tension Packaging & Automation supports this shift with solutions like the HPS-300 Variable Length Poly Bagging System, which creates right-sized packages to reduce material usage and waste. By combining durable consumables with innovative automation, we help businesses protect the environment while optimizing efficiency.

According to a recent study, 72% of Americans would be more likely to purchase again from brands that ship sustainably (i.e., use less plastic). This research resonates with our customers, as many have expressed to us the need for sustainable packaging solutions. 

Tension Packaging & Automation is an organization committed to our environment and our customers. We offer a variety of sustainable packaging solutions (including the means for customers to use less plastic when packaging goods) from equipment to consumables, with precision focus on quality in all we do.  

Improving Sustainability Through an Operational Approach 

Sustainability goes beyond consideration for our environment; it’s taking responsibility for the environment and incorporating sustainability into your operations, processes, and entire approach to business. 

Through our Lean and Continuous Improvement culture, Tension strives to offer the highest quality in everything we do. This translates into durable, quality paper and poly consumable options that better protect the contents inside the package, which eventually reduces landfill waste from damaged items. The same approach to quality holds true for our equipment — and in the case of our HPS-300 variable length poly bagging system, we can create a poly bag that is right-sized for a product, reducing the amount of material needed for the package and ultimately the waste produced.  

Ultimately, by using quality consumable materials yet less of them when we create our packages, we better protect our environment both from potential waste inside the package and from the package itself. 

The HPS-300 Variable Length Poly Bagging System for eCommerce Automation

Our customers expressed a need for an eCommerce packaging solution that accepts a continuous stream of different sized goods while using less material than a fixed-size bag and with a variable cutoff. Packages are right-sized to help reduce packaging waste, and the HPS-300 uses cost-effective C-Fold poly film material with a heat seal to create a tamper-resistant, durable package. 

Designed specifically for shipping variable size items, the HPS accepts a continuous stream of products, determines the optimum size for the length and creates a finished package. It’s an ideal solution for packaging clothing, soft goods, shoes and boxed items. It is also modular in design, which enables us to add different features depending on customers’ needs, such as rate shopping, weight verification and pre-weights. 

Variable length bags created on the HPS-300 save costs on material, resulting in a tighter, smaller package. The easy-to-operate HMI touchscreen control panel enables the system to be operated by a single user. This is a major benefit in our current environment where labor is hard to find (stay tuned for Part 2 of this post to learn how our eCommerce packaging solutions can help organizations navigate labor shortages). 

Stay Connected with an Industry Leader

Tension Packaging & Automation is a leader in complete packaging and automation solutions for the eCommerce and pharmacy automation industries. Tension designs and builds equipment and systems, in addition to providing the consumables, software, service and support that help pharmacies and eCommerce fulfillment centers optimize productivity. 

Contact Tension

Founded in 1886, Tension Corporation – parent company of Tension Packaging & Automation – has a legacy of delivering excellence and innovation for envelope products, packaging and packaging automation solutions.  Contact us to get started on your sustainability journey. 

Product Spotlight: HPS-300

Tension Team on March 8, 2022

With over 75% of specialty retail supply chain leaders prioritizing 2-day delivery, efficient packaging is essential for meeting customer expectations. Tension’s HPS-300 Variable Length Poly Bagging System is designed to streamline operations by creating right-sized, securely sealed packages for variable-sized items. Capable of producing 8 to 18 packages per minute, it integrates seamlessly with WMS and TMS systems, offering accuracy, cost savings, and adaptability for eCommerce businesses.

A recent survey by McKinsey & Company highlighted that more than 75% of specialty retail supply chain leaders have made 2-day delivery a priority, and 42% are aiming for same-day delivery by 2022.

Subsequently, competitive changes in the retail space have driven customer expectations. Consumers increasingly seek convenience from companies they choose to do business with in the form of expedient deliveries and delivery options, while the companies grapple with how to deliver in this environment in terms of their operational efficiencies.

Retailers who seek efficiencies in their packaging operations can benefit from Tension’s HPS-300 horizontal packaging system.

What is the HPS?

Designed specifically for shipping variable-sized items, the HPS-300 variable length poly bagging packaging system accepts a continuous stream of products, determines the optimum size for the length of the package, applies a shipping label and creates a finished package. It features a built-in print and apply labeling section and next bag out technology, assuring your customer’s packages is accurately bagged, sealed and labeled. In typical operations, the HPS-300 can produce 8 to 18 packages per minute.* And with the strong, cost-effective C-Fold poly film material, the HPS-300 creates a sturdy package that is securely sealed with Tension’s proprietary heat seal technology.

*Actual throughput is dependent upon multiple factors including staffing productivity and performance, workflows, data interfaces and availability of product to the system.

HPS-300 Benefits

In addition to its ability to accept a continuous stream of variable-sized items, the HPS-300 features a variety of
other benefits:

  • Right-sized Packaging: Variable length provides a tighter, smaller package and saves on
    material costs.
  • Accurate Orders: Built in print-n-apply labeling system with Next Bag Out technology.
  • Ease of Operation: HMI touchscreen control panel takes the guesswork out of operation.
  • Adaptable: Integrates with your WMS and TMS software systems.
  • Secure: Heat sealing method creates a sturdy seal for your package.
  • Flexible Package Sizes: Can create packages up to 21.5″ wide x 30″ long with a 7″ pass thru.

Popular Options for the HPS-300

A variety of options are available based on your needs and configurations. Some include:

  • Inline scale
  • Package sorting system for multiple carriers & service levels
  • Belted infeed and exit conveyor
  • Shrink Tunnel
  • Workstations and a Put-to-Pack Wall
  • Middleware software integration with optional productivity reporting

Additionally, a unique sorting system can be added to create your complete package processing system.

Who Needs the HPS-300?

Tension’s HPS-300 is an ideal eCommerce packaging solution for apparel and shoe companies, especially if they need a system to handle a continuous stream of variable sized items. The HPS-300 is also a good solution for companies who package soft goods and boxed items, such as bed linens or other household items.

Watch the HPS-300 Video

Seeing is believing: Watch this video of how our HPS-300 accepts a continuous stream of products, determines the optimum size for the length and creates a finished package.

Want More Information?

Give your eCommerce and fulfillment operations a boost toward more efficiencies in 2022 with an HPS-300 variable
length poly bagging packaging system. Contact us to get started today, or check our product page for more details.