It's In The Bag at Progressive Planet's Showcase Station Four

The fourth stop on Progressive Planet’s Showcase tour introduces us to the heart of our packaging operations, and the most tireless member of the Progressive Planet team – our Probot.

Since 2009 this powerhouse machine has improved our operations and saved the backs of countless Progressive Planet employees.?Capable of palletizing up to 960 bags per hour, fully automated and adaptable to myriad packaging types, our Probot approaches human-level dexterity combined with robot-level speed.?The Probot’s ability to reduce manual labour contributes to Progressive Planet’s impressive safety record.?Our Total Recordable Incident Rate for 2022 is zero.

The Probot handles and stacks over 1.3 million bags and boxes per year.?We can fill two different types of packaging simultaneously and the Probot will palletize both at the same time.

At this point in our Showcase, visitors also saw firsthand the packaging waste reduction initiative we have undertaken using our newly implemented company-wide culture of Lean.

Lean is a framework for optimizing value to customers by eliminating waste. Using the Lean structure, organizations employ a robust set of problem-solving tools and practices to uncover and minimize the inherent waste that accrues over time. Five Progressive Planet team members recently graduated from LeanAgile Greenbelt certification through Lean Sensei International in our first tranche of training, with more than 50 PLAN employees being trained to various levels on an ongoing basis.

We demonstrated the reduction in waste and costs made possible by choosing plastic bags over cardboard boxes.?Our bags are made from easily recyclable high-density polyethylene (HDPE). ??Boxes, while made from renewable cardboard, take up 10 times the storage space of plastic bags.?5000 bags can be stored on a single pallet, whereas only 500 flat boxes take up the same amount of space.?Boxes are also more costly; plastic bags can be less than half the cost of a cardboard equivalent.?Additional savings in transportation costs and emissions are realized as we move pallets, rather than truckloads, of the same amount of packaging!?

For the icing on the cake, our required storage space is lowered by a staggering 90%.?This is an enormous reduction that allows us to dedicate more room in the facility for operational upgrades and efficiency improvements.?

With labour-saving equipment like the Probot in use and a culture of continuous improvement now implemented through Lean training, Progressive Planet will continue to reduce waste and increase value in every aspect of our business.