 Proceedings of Engineering and Technology Innovat ion, vol. 6, 2017, pp. 17 - 22 The Development of a New Paper Pallet Machine Chi-Wei Chen * Department of Marketing and Distribution Management, Tajen University, Pingtung, Taiwan, ROC. Received 13 July 2017; received in revised form 15 July 2017, accept ed 19 July 2017 Abstract In modern industry world, logistics plays an import role of enhancing the effic iency of shipping goods by use of pallets. The shipping pallets used in modern industry sites are generally made o f meta l, plastic, wood, or paper. Among them, the wood pallet is used most often by many firms bec ause of low manufacturing cost. However, a wood pallet is not the best shipping selection by use in the area of air cargo transportation because of its weight and fro m the perspective of environ mental preservation. Thus, for a ir cargo transportation, paper pallet is a better shipping selection because of its light weight advantage and also a good shipping tool for upgrading the competitiveness of Taiwan’s electronic industry by reducing its air cargo shipping cost. In current paper pallet manufacturing mach ine requires many workers to work with and also generates many wasted papers, which is not a good way fro m the perspective of reducing cost and environmental preservation. A new manufacturing approach was thus proposed and a new machine was also designed to manufacture the newly designed paper pallet. The new paper pallet design was successfully imp le mented and the new prototype machine was also successfully developed. At least 20% of paper was saved comparing to the same size of paper pa llet made by the cu rrent best existing paper pallet machine. And the workers used in new manufacturing process of making paper pallet were a lso reduced at least 10 workers comparing to the process of current existing paper pallet manufacturing machine. Keywor ds: paper pallet design, paper pallet machine, air cargo transportation , supply chain management, logistics management 1. Introduction During the product manufacturing process and shipping process of finished goods, logistic s area was not being paid enough attention by many industries. Thus, in 1962, Peter Drucke r ca lled the area of logistic s is “The economy’s dark continent” [1-2]. The ma jor reason is that many manufacturing firms are always seeking or ma king new machines, or develop new manufacturing processes to increase their productivities. In recent 20 years, there are more manufacturing firms realize to increase the efficiency of supply chain operation is also an import mean to enhance overall productivities. Thus, this paper is intended to propose a new paper pallet design and a new paper pallet machine to enhance the efficiency of logistics operation . Traditional ma rine shipping cargo is in the size of 20 or 40-foot long(X8-foot width X 8-foot height) container and usually use pallets with standard specification of 80X120c m or 100X120c m(Euro spec.), 110X110c m(JIS Spec.), 110X110co m or 100X120c m(CNS -Ta iwan Spec.) . In 2007, Singapore, Shanghai, Hong Kong ,Shen zhen, Yingkou(Liaonian, China), Kaoshiung are in the Top 10 lis t of ma rine cargo import and e xport amount (20-foot equivalent unit, TUE) , which was shown in Table 1 and the international airport air cargo shipping amount was shown in Table 2[3]. *Corresponding author. E-mail address: cthomas@tajen.edu.tw Tel: +886-8-7624002 ext.3213 Proceedings of Engineering and Technology Innovation, vol. 6, 2017, pp. 17 - 22 Copyright © TAETI 18 Table 1 2007 World Harbor Ranking by import/export cargo Cargo import/export amount (TUEs) Ranking Harbor name Country TUEs 1 Singapore Singapore 27,935,500 2 Shanghai China 26,152,400 3 Hong Kong China 23,998,440 4 Shenzhen China 21,103,800 5 Yingkou (Liaonian, China) 13,713,000 6 Busan South Korea 13,254,703 7 Rotterdam Netherlands 10,790,604 8 Dubai UAE 10,653,026 9 Kaoshiung Taiwan 10,256,829 10 Hamburg Germany 9,917,180 In the case of marine shipping cargo, each TUE needs at least about 10 standard pallets to support unit loads of products. Therefore, huge a mount of pallets are needed in this globalizat ion modern world. Also huge amount of pallets are made of wood and some special goods requested plastic pallets. And some heavy products need metal pa llets to carry goods. Wood pallets are most often used by manufacturing firms because of its low cost. However, if goods are manufactured in Ta iwan or China and are needed to be shipped to Developed Countries, such as USA, UK, or most European countries, wood pallets are needed to add up smoking treat ment and discard cost(usually burning cost), which is not a cost effect method to handle overse a shipping. The most difficult tas k for Ta iwan or Ch ina manufacturing firms to reduce the shipping cost is that an effic ient mach ine is not existed in modern wo rld wide. Paper pa llets are always only one -third of weight a mount of the same size wood pallets. In the area of air ca rgo shipping, paper pallets have large advantages of reducing shipping cost. And about 75% of wood pallets could be replaced by paper pallets. Regarding a ir cargo transportation, as in Table 2, Ta iwan and Ch ina occupied Top list of international a ir cargo ran king and indeed both Taiwan and Ch ina have many e lectronic products are needed to be shipped to countries worldwide. Thus paper pallets are in big he lp of reducing shipping cost by us ing its light weight advantage and also in the perspective of environmental preservations. Table 2 2008 International Airport Ranking by import/export cargo Cargo import/export amount (Tons) Ranking International Airport Country Tons 1 Memphis International Airport USA 3,695,438 2 Hong Kong International Airport China 3,660,901 3 Shanghai Pudong International Airport China 2,602,916 4 Incheon International Airport South Korea 2,423,717 10 Singapore Changi Airport Singapore 1,883,894 15 Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport Taiwan 1,493,120 The proposed newly designed paper pallet mach ine is going to generate a new environ mental protection business with a manufacturing process without waste water and waste air produced. Its manufacturing material could be fro m recycled papers and its scraps could be recycled and shipped to paper manufacturing factories to be used as raw materials. 2. Existing Paper Pallet Machine and Paper Pallet Designs As mentioned above, both Taiwan and China have la rge a mount of electronic products need to be shipped by a ir cargo to many fore ign countries worldwide. Thus, the demand of paper pallets is numerous. Co mparing to the end price between wood and paper pallets, wood pallets will not have much more advantages than paper pallets. Ho wever, in the case of air cargo s hipping, paper pallets will be a better selection than wood pallets. In 2009, Eu ropean Union was intended to force other countries sellers to use paper pallets to ship goods to enter European Un ion countries. This dec ision was hold back, because there is no efficient paper pallet machine available in recent industry markets. Proceedings of Engineering and Technology Innovation, vol. 6, 2017, pp. 17 - 22 Copyright © TAETI 19 In Taiwan, there are about 30 sma ll co mpanies in the business as paper pallets suppliers. The manufacturing method used is all in a very old fashion way, pure ly made by hu man hands and simple tools, and without any mechanica l design s and calculations. The situation in China is that some manufacturing firms are using a paper pallet machine designed by Netherland , which required many (at lease 20) worke rs to finish a complete paper pallet. The paper pallet machine developed by Netherland was not designed in a highly automat ion way because during its manufacturing process that it still needs many human workers to perform tasks for work -in-p rocess. The manufacturing process es, including stage 1 and stage 2 shown in Fig. 1 and Fig. 2 respectively, are as follows: Stage 1. Manufacturing the core material of a bee-hives type paper pallet: Fig. 1 The flow chart of making core materials of a bee-hives type paper pallet Stage 2. Forming a paper pallet Fig. 2 The flow chart of making a complete bee-hives type paper pallet This type of paper pa llet is strong enough to support a unit load o f e lectronic products whose average we ight is usually less than 500kgs. Usually for the bee-hives type paper pallets, static carrying strength could go up to more than 1000kgs, while dynamic carrying we ight usually less than 1000kgs because of the strength limits of the be -hives type core materia l. Fro m cost management point of view, the bee-hives type paper pallet consumes too much human powers. 3. A Proposed New Paper Pallet Design and a New Designed Paper Pallet M achine 3.1. A new paper pallet design The proposed paper pallet design has about 20 years of innovation patent protection. The main design of paper pallet ma in board differs fro m that of bee-hives type paper pallet ma in board is the core material inside the main board. The core material of the proposed paper pallet has wave type structure and during the manufacturing process, the core materia l does not need human powers to perform any cutting procedure and thus will not generate any scraps. The core mate ria l of e xisting bee-h ives type paper pallets need human powers (at least 2 persons) to perform stretching and cutting procedure before putting core materia l inside industry papers for succeeding wrapping procedure. The major drawback of the previous process is the time needed for bee-hives type core materia l after pasting glue, heating and drying glues used for adhere outside industry papers and core materia l. The density of glue and the temperature of heating box are key factors affecting the manufacturing efficiency. Proceedings of Engineering and Technology Innovation, vol. 6, 2017, pp. 17 - 22 Copyright © TAETI 20 The proposed wave type structure also faced the challenge of density of glue used and the heating temperature adjustment, which we re overcome eventually. The majo r challenges of wave type structure core materia l could be separated into two parts. First part is during shaping the wave type structure procedure. It will need very strong forces to transform a flat carton paper to wave type structure, while the wave height is the key factor of affecting final strength of paper pallets. Second part is to place a wave type structure core material inside a pre -mold ing carton flat paper and to perform a wrapping procedure. As mention above, in this stage, the glue density and heating temperature setting are very important factors to affec t the strength of final paper pallets. This paper ma inly concentrates efforts on the main board design. The manufacturing of legs used for the proposed paper pallet ma in board is a minor proble m co mparing to the consideration for designing the paper palle t machine. The legs could be manufactured by special designed small molds. The samples of the proposed new paper pallet design are shown in Fig 3 as follows: Fig. 3 The samples of proposed paper pallets 3.2. The proposed new paper pallet machine In order to produce the paper pallets mentioned above, new manufacturing procedures are developed and are shown in Fig. 4 as follows . A prototype machine was also developed to perform the following procedures : Fig. 4 The proposed new paper pallet machine working procedures As shown in Fig. 4, whole manufacturing procedures without any cutting process, therefore, it will not generate any scraps. The ma jor variab le cost for the ma in boards of paper pallet is fro m the weight of carton papers and indu stry papers used, and also fro m the wo rking hours of human powe rs used. Just simply co mparing the manufacturing procedures between bee-hives type paper pallet and the proposed paper pallet, the latter shows a more efficient manufacturing procedure. 3.2.1. Wave type structure shaping In this step, a design engineer needs to calculate the strength of carton flat paper to be used [4] and the feeding speed of ma in machine to perform wave type structure shaping [5-8]. If the selection of paper strength is not correct, it will increase the risk of tearing apart the carton flat papers during the shaping wave type structure process , which is an important procedure that Proceedings of Engineering and Technology Innovation, vol. 6, 2017, pp. 17 - 22 Copyright © TAETI 21 any engineer needs to be very cautious to avoid making mistakes. If a carton flat paper was tearing apart in the paper pallet mach ine, the whole machine has to be shut down and the process of removing the scraps inside the paper pallet machine is needed. The situations mentioned above must be tested during test runs. As the green light starts for making the main boards of proposed paper pallet, the machine must be sure that it will perform smoothly. The feed ing speed of ma king each ma in board could be adjusted up to 60 ma in boards per minute, however, the co ming cha llenge is the pasting and heatin g speed must be adjusted to match up the feeding speed of main machine. 3.2.2. Gluing, pasting and heating procedures The key factors of adhering carton flat paper with wave type structure are not the a mount of glue used, nor the brand na me of glue used, but the density of glue used and the time needed to mix the surface fibers tangled together for both carton flat papers and wave type structure core materia ls. When an engineer find the right density of glue and the time needed to put both carton flat papers and wave type structure together, he has solved one of the most fetal problems of making paper pallets. For the p roposed paper pallet mach ine, before starting the machine, a stack of carton flat papers will put in front of mach ine in order to feed into the machine and performing wave type structure shaping procedure. In the same time, the bottom position of the paper pallet mach ine which is designed and placed under surface ground 2 meters depth with ma jor functions of feeding in carton flat papers, g luing, pasting on the bottom of the wave type structure. As soon as accomplishing the procedures mentioned above, the following step will be performing heating procedure to adhere both parts. The following step is wrapping another pre-mold ing carton flat paper on the work-in-process item which is a wave type structure was attached on a carton flat paper. The purpose of this step is to avoid the work-in-process item decreasing its peak heights. As its peak height decreased, the strength of the paper pallet decreased. The holding force could be applied by e xtending the machine structure of a strip of conveyors and apply ing jig and fixtures to withhold the work-in-process on the conveyors while continue its glue drying process, and which can be added up to 10, maybe 100 meters or more , if needed, depending on the space of factories one has or what budget one has. 3.3. Purchasing cost, weight, and other factors among wood pallets, existing paper pallets in Taiwan, and the proposed paper pallet Table 3 Comparisons of wood pallets and paper pallets (according to a pallet with 100cmX100c m, dynamic carrying weight 800kgs) Proposed paper pallets Wood pallets Existing paper pallets (in Taiwan) Weight/each 7kgs 18~40kgs 8~12kgs Manufacturing process Shaping, pasting Cutting, sawing, nailing Gluing, pasting, cutting Market price(NT$) 250 280~300 260~450 Waste treatment Recycled Burning or burying Recycled Contaminant None Wood scraps Paper scraps Automation Feasible Half automation Hand made As shown in Table 3, market price and light weight advantages of proposed paper pallets are better than that of wood pallets. Co mpare to the producing speed between existing paper pallets manufacturers in Taiwan and the proposed paper pallet mach ine, the latter shows much better automation advantage. The proposed paper pallet machine a lso could be applied in China, since many Taiwan’s e lectronic manufacturers have invested in China and their products are needed to be shipped to countries worldwide. Proceedings of Engineering and Technology Innovation, vol. 6, 2017, pp. 17 - 22 Copyright © TAETI 22 3.4. Other advantages of using paper pallets Final step of discarding wood pallets is burning which will generate 100kgs of carbon dio xide per 100c mx100c m wood pallet. It was indicated in 2006[9] that one ton of carbon right trading price in European Union ma rket is 20~25Euro. Thus, in the case of Shanghai port (China), the ma rine shipping a mount is 26,152,400 T UEs (in 2007). If 75% of marine shipping amount could be transferred to paper pellets shipping, the shipping amount will be 19,614,300 TUEs. Each TUE ne eds about 10 pallets to accomp lish unit load tasks, therefore, yearly Shanghai port will consume 196,143,000 paper pallets. Each paper pallet will reduce 100kgs of carbon dioxide generation which yearly could reduce 196,143,000 x 100 kgs = 19,614,300 tons of carbon dio xide. The previous a mount could be transferred to money wh ich is 19,614,300 x 20 Euro = 392,286,000 Euro per year. Another fact is using recycled papers to ma ke pa llet s could reduce cutting trees. Thus, using the previous data fro m Shanghai port, yearly it could use 196,143,000 paper pa llets. Each paper pallet we ights 7.5 kgs, yearly Shanghai could generate 196,143,000 x 7.5kg / 1000kg = 1,471,070 tons of recycled papers. One ton of recycled paper will save cutting 17 trees, wh ich means that Shanghai port yearly could save 1,471,070 x 17trees = 25,008,190 trees. 4. Conclusions and Future Studies In this paper, a ne w design of paper pallet was proposed and a new paper pallet mach ine was also introduced. The ne w proposed machine could resolve the issues related to the paper pallet machine used in Ch ina that was designed by Netherland. The labor cost is increasing dramat ically late ly in Ch ina, especially in Southern-East Coast area. Low labor wage is no longer a huge advantage of investing manufacturing firms in Ch ina. Electronic manufacturing firms in Ta iwan or China need to pay more attention to enhance the efficiency of Global Logistic Management issues. Also, the advantages of using paper pallets to acquire e xtra economic returns by engaging carbon right trading market and save cutting trees to protect our environment were a lso introduced. Econo mic development a lso could ma int ain the sustainable environment preservations. The issue regarding shearing force of ma king wave type structure for the proposed paper pallet needs to be re-e xa mined carefully. Expe riments could also be adopted for testing the strength ranges of carton flat papers used without tearing apart during the shaping procedure. An alternative is to develop a different method of feeding carton papers, not only increasing feeding speed but also reducing the risks of occurring carton paper jams. References [1] J. D. Wisner, G. K. Leong, and K. Tan, Principles of supply chain management-a balanced approach, South Western, a division of Thomson Learning, Inc., 2005. [2] Peter F. Drucker, “The economy’s dark continent,” Fortune, p.14, April 1962. [3] Douglas C. Long and E. S. Su, Global Logistics Management, 2nd ed. Taipei:Hwatai Publishing Co., pp.248-249, June 2010.(In Chinese) [4] A. C. Ugural, Mechanics of materials , Taipei;New York:McGra w-Hill, 1991. [5] M. F. Spotts, T. E. Shoup, Design of Machine Elements, 7th ed., New Jersey: Simom & Schuster, 2002. [6] J. L. Moum, Z. Lin, S. S. Shei, etc., Applied Force-Kinematics, Taipei:Gou-Li Publisher, January 1995.(In Chinese) [7] Mikell P. Groover, Automation, Production System, and Computer Integrated Manufacturing, New Jersey:Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1987. [8] Mikell P. Groover, Fundamentals of modern manufacturing-materials, Processes, and Systems, 2nd ed., New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 2002. [9] Liberty Times, Taipei, 10 June, 2006.(In Chinese)