Labor Shortages Hit Packing Floors Hardest (Image Credits: Unsplash)
Food manufacturing plants across North America faced mounting pressure at the case packing and palletizing stages, where repetitive heavy lifting and frequent product switches strained limited workforces. As stock-keeping units proliferated with new flavors, sizes, and variants, facilities that once managed a handful of formats now handled dozens daily. This shift compounded labor shortages, prompting a wave of investments in flexible robotic systems to sustain output and quality.
Labor Shortages Hit Packing Floors Hardest
End-of-line tasks demanded sustained physical effort, such as stacking 60-pound boxes for full shifts, which proved difficult to staff consistently. Turnover ran high in these roles due to ergonomic demands and fatigue, leading to inconsistent pallet stability and higher rates of product damage during shipping. Manufacturers reported that manual operations faltered under the weight of these challenges, with quality issues often originating from variability in human stacking.
Mike Brewster, Vice President of Sales at Pacteon Group, highlighted the issue: “It’s difficult to find and retain employees to manually stack 60-lb boxes consistently onto a pallet. And that’s before taking into account the ergonomic challenges that presents.” Robotic alternatives offered reliability, boasting mean times between failures of 80,000 to 100,000 hours, far outpacing human endurance over long shifts.
SKU Expansion Transforms Case Packing Demands
Over the past decade, food facilities saw their SKU counts rise sharply, forcing end-of-line equipment to adapt to more case sizes and configurations. What began as systems tuned for four formats evolved into operations juggling twelve or more, with each switch requiring manual adjustments that idled lines for 20 minutes to over an hour. These delays eroded throughput, especially in plants rotating multiple SKUs per shift.
Advanced case packers countered this by embedding flexibility into their core design. Schneider Packaging Equipment, under the Pacteon Group, developed solutions like ProAdjust and ProAdjust Lite. ProAdjust automated positioning with a button press for new formats, while ProAdjust Lite guided operators via lights and verification steps, enabling even less experienced staff to execute changes accurately and swiftly.
Palletizing Systems Evolve with Software Smarts
Diverse case dimensions also reshaped pallet building, as stable loads necessitated custom stacking patterns tailored to each SKU. Manual changes relied on training and printed guides, risking errors that compromised transit integrity. Automated palletizers shifted this burden to software, allowing quick recipe storage and recall without technician intervention.
Schneider’s OptiStak software, developed alongside FANUC America, empowered operators to generate and save patterns via the machine interface. A new SKU recipe could be added in minutes, and switches executed in seconds, minimizing downtime. This capability proved vital for high-volume environments, where end-of-line investments often recouped costs within 12 to 24 months through reduced overtime and higher uptime.
Key Factors for Future-Proofing Investments
Food producers evaluated automation not just for immediate gains but for longevity amid ongoing product evolution. Equipment locked into narrow formats quickly became obsolete, underscoring the need for broad compatibility from the outset. Automated changeovers, wide format ranges, and in-house software controls emerged as priorities to curb recurring costs and vendor dependencies.
- Changeover speed: Prioritize systems automating adjustments to slash manual time from hours to minutes.
- Format versatility: Select machines handling diverse case sizes to accommodate growth without replacement.
- Software autonomy: Opt for palletizers with self-managed pattern libraries, keeping operations in plant staff hands.
- Line integration: Favor coordinated systems over isolated units to avoid bottlenecks and simplify maintenance.
Pacteon streamlined this process as a single-source provider, integrating cartoners, case packers, conveyors, palletizers, and stretch wrappers from brands like Schneider Packaging Equipment, ESS Technologies, Descon Conveyor Systems, and Phoenix Stretch Wrappers. This approach eased coordination for plant teams.
A Shift Toward Resilient Production Lines
Market data underscored the trend: North American robot orders in food and consumer goods surged, marking the fastest growth in 2024 and 2025, with a 105 percent year-over-year jump in the third quarter of 2025 alone, per the Association for Advancing Automation. Labor constraints drove much of this uptake, transforming automation from a nice-to-have into a staffing imperative.
Modular robotic setups lowered entry barriers, suiting even mid-sized operations with compact footprints. As SKU diversity and workforce challenges persisted into 2026, manufacturers positioned these technologies as foundations for adaptable lines, ensuring steady shipments despite external pressures. Plant managers now weighed not just savings, but the human relief of dependable, round-the-clock performance.
