The most basic calculation of total cost of ownership on a servo overwrapper involves looking not simply at the capital expenditure involved. You need to look at ongoing operating cost differentials, downtime, maintenance, changeover, electricity costs. Even ease of use affects the uptime of the overwrapper.

All too often the buying decision looks only at payback through increased speed or throughput and fails to make assumptions about potential savings in operating costs.

• Electricity. This can be huge if switching from a shrinkwrapper. Shrink wrapper ovens require 600 amp service. Our entire machine runs on less than 30 amps.What this translates to in cost savings for your operation is based on your local utility costs, but we have seen a cost justification for an overwrapper purchase based solely on electricity savings.
• Wrapping Material  Over the life of the over wrapper you will spend far more in material to wrap than you spent to buy the overwrapper. For shrink-wrapping the estimate is 20% more in film to shrink than to overwrap, plus you have the option for printed film with overwrap. For flow-wrapping it ranges from 12-50% more in excess film costs depending on the excess film used in flow wrap.
• Aftermarket parts costs. Our servo overwrapper has 65% fewer moving parts than a mechanical overwrapper. Those nonexistent parts cannot break or create a big cost to you in aftermarket service. You should be able to calculate your parts purchases on your existing overwrapper.
• Labor. The labor savings is sometimes a hard one to calculate. Downtime due to time to do a size changeover is somewhat easier. Some overwrappers can take up to 8 hours to change over. We have customers who can do a 10 minute 3-D changeover including film roll, which they will do more than once in a shift, but others take longer.  Service and maintenance can be more difficult to compare, since some servicing can be done while an overwrapper is in use. We do know that downtime is reduced if there are fewer parts to break or wear out. We also know that changeover time is reduced with the recipe storage on a servo over wrapper.

While these are the most critical costs to calculate in looking at the total cost of ownership on a servo over wrapper, there may be others that are unique to your circumstances. For instance, ease of use can be a factor as can having instructions on the screen, recipe storage for different size packages.

We are happy to help you determine which costs are most important to your situation. email sales@packagemachinery.com or call  1.413.732.4000 to speak to an experienced engineer.