Wednesday, January 07, 2015VIENNA, Ohio -- Everything gets used and reused at Millwood Inc. At the wood products and packaging company center here, anything sent there will be reused in one way or another.
“We utilize any pieces of the pallets that are broken or taken off during the refurbishing process,” says Ben Timmons, manager of business development for Millwood Natural, the division of Millwood that creates products for the oil and gas industry. “We can use those as sawdust that gets put into the silt socks. It minimizes the products that go to landfills when there’s still use for them.”
Silt socks are long tubes of mesh called Filtrexx filled with sawdust and mulch. They are used to contain runoff at construction sites, often for the oil and gas industry operating in this area.
To fill the tubes, wood chips made from unusable parts of pallets that come into Millwood are fed into a bucket and then shredded again into smaller chunks, then pushed into the tube.
“It’s kind of like making sausage,” Timmons says with a chuckle. “It comes through and is fed into this tube, which is coiled up at the other end [of the machine] and then wrapped up for shipment.”
While being fed into the silt socks is the end of the line for the pieces of pallets that come into the building, it takes a lot to reach that point.
First, pallets are shipped to the Millwood warehouse -- one of 27, all east of the Mississippi River -- and sorted. The standard size --also known as a GMA pallet, measures 40 by 48 inches –--s sent to one stack while others, knows as “odds,” are put in another.
“From there, strippers go over them, take out what’s no good and repair them. Then, they’re put onto a line where they get stickers put on them based on their size and then the quality control guys go over them just to make sure nobody missed anything,” says floor foreman Jason Hidey.
The parts that are broken or have started to rot are taken off the pallet and put into one of several large green dumpsters throughout the center. When full, the dumpsters are taken outside and emptied into a wood chipper; the bits that come out the other end are pushed to a pile of mulch nearby. A small front loader scoops up the mulch and takes it inside to be put into silt socks.
The parts that are usable are collected and either taken apart into individual boards to be used on other pallets or set aside to have new boards put on. Along the line, if a company requests a certain appearance, such as colored ends or numbering, workers tend to that with spray paint and stencils.
The warehouse in Vienna does make a small number of new pallets, Hidey says. The orders for new pallets are usually custom sizes intended to be used for specific purposes.
“We take parts from old pallets and put them back together to make it into something that someone wants. If someone brings us a GMA pallet and wants a 40-by-32, we can take parts from what they give us that isn’t good anymore, take the runners and cut them down to size and put it all together so the customer can get exactly what they want,” he explains.
Most pallets that come through, though, are simply repaired and sent back to the company that owns them. The companies that use Millwood’s service in Vienna cover the spectrum, corporate marketing director John Moore says.
“Almost every industry uses our products in one way or another,” he comments.
In the company’s headquarters next to the warehouse, a wall is filled with the logos of companies that use Millwood pallets, including Morton Salt, Toys R Us, General Electric and Kohler. One of the companies with a huge demand is Coca-Cola, whose pallets all bear the familiar shade of red.
“They’re brokered through a return program. Everything that Coke ships is shipped on these pallets,” Hidey relates. “Somebody else builds them but they bring them to us to fix them and send them back out. When Coke sends them to stores, they get unloaded and then the stores ship them back to us. We make sure they’re all good and if they need repairs, we repair them and put them back into circulation.”
Each company, Hidey adds, usually has its own specifications for its pallets, although most are similar with small variances here and there.
“It all depends on the product that you transport. Everything is a different weight or a different configuration as far as large or small, boxed or not,” Moore says. “If you’re working with, say, a distribution warehouse who’s working with a grocery store, they’ll be stacking pallets of detergent on top of water on top of food. The loads vary so you have to make sure you’re using the right type of base and using the right packaging so you can contain and protect the load properly.”
Above the warehouse, on the second story that overhangs about half of the bottom floor, another division of Millwood – Liberty Technologies – is developing a grade book for the various wraps used downstairs. Through several different testing machines, the wraps are tested on how well they hold up under stretching, shaking and poking.
“In the world of packaging, everything depends on what you’re using, what you’re using it for and how it’s being sent. There are a thousand ways you can make a unit load, between the pallet, the wrap and the product itself,” says Chimadika Okoye, who works in the new business development department. “Depending on what manufacturers are using and who’s using the pallets, we want to make sure that we can have them use whatever [product is] best for them.”
One machine, a large silver box about the size of a fully loaded pallet, is bound with stretch wrap. Once it’s fully covered, sensors on the inside can relay data on how much force is being put on the package.
On one side of the box, a spear can push the wrap until it punctures. On the opposite side, a cylinder pushes out. The spear and the cylinder both test the tensile strength of the wrap. The tests determine how strong a pre-stretch is needed, Okoye says.
“If you use a higher pre-stretch, the idea is that it should be a stronger wrap and allow less movement for the load. When we test all of these tensions, we want to see what it will hold at the weakest tension and the highest tension,” he explains. “That way, we can see what wraps are best for different loads.”
Despite three separate divisions of the company operating simultaneously inside the Vienna center, Timmons says it all runs smoothly because there is no hesitation in communication between them.
“On the business side, we all try to help each other out. When there are other opportunities in other divisions that someone else sees, they chime in,” he says. “On my side, if I see something that could be done by another part of the Millwood family, I let them know.”
What it all comes down to, Moore notes, is getting something from Point A to Point B. It’s Millwood’s job to help a company figure out the right way to do that and reusing materials that would otherwise go to waste helps keeps costs down.
“With transport packaging, we look at unit loads. Typically it’s on a pallet and we work with them to figure out the right pallet to use, the right packing materials to contain it on the pallet and then any equipment needed to apply the packaging or move it from A to B,” he continues. “We have pallets that are continually reused and recycled as the customer needs it. It’s just a less expensive way for some of our customers to use those pallets.”
Copyright 2015 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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