The Challenge

Crescent was doing all of their co-packing by hand – hand-case-erecting, hand-packing, hand-sealing, hand-palletizing. And as time went on, the strain of growth on manual operations increased. The labor problems that Crescent faced are not unusual, but they never point to one quick solution. Crescent’s Senior Director of Engineered Solutions, John Marietta, remarked that, “for five years, we were always looking for something that could do case erecting for us.”

But Crescent’s challenge in automating wasn’t a lack of case erectors on the market; it was the options that were available. Nothing fit their needs. Crescent faced three major hurdles:

The Solution

John had experience with Douglas machines through a previous position at a large-scale manufacturer, but thought “I’m looking for something else – they’re too high end.” Then John found their sister company INSITE – the quality and design intentionality of Douglas, but with the right price, the right specs, and the right footprint for Crescent’s needs.

From there, Crescent worked with INSITE to find the right fit for their operation. John recalls the sales experience as being a process of meeting Crescent’s needs – it was personal; it was partnership. They decided on INSITE’s E30T Case Erector. It maximized the use of space in their facility, with its compact 14.90’ x 4.66’ footprint. And the max speed of 30 cases per minute (CPM) was ideal for mixing with their hand-packing system, while still meeting leadtime demands. A few years later, and Crescent now has INSITE solutions in three of their lines with:

The Results

After a few years of collaboration, Crescent and INSITE have built a close partnership. Crescent’s main problem, labor cost and availability, was remedied through their INSITE installations. Not only has Crescent’s overall headcount been reduced, but it’s cut the stress and cost of managing, hiring and paying for that labor.

They’ve run around 1,000,000 cases on their first erector and only experienced one or two failures, which were remedied through “a repairman in there really quick – like in two days – which is good,” recalled Mike O’Brien, Crescent’s Contract Packaging and Facilities Engineer.

They’ve seen a decline in their overall unplanned downtime, even as they moved from manual erecting to automation. Crescent now looks forward to greater goals that would have been difficult to implement in the past.