High Performance Machine Film Cuts Waste for a Medical Device Manufacturer
Case Study

The Company 

A medical device manufacturer producing sterile, packaged products for hospital and clinical distribution wraps a steady volume of outbound pallets every week using automatic wrap stations on its distribution floor. Given the value and sensitivity of the product being shipped, load protection had always been treated as non-negotiable — and the packaging spec reflected that. 

The Challenge 

A routine packaging audit turned up something the operations team hadn’t questioned in years: the machine film being used was significantly overspecified for the job. 

The site was running a 23 micron gauge film at roughly 110g of plastic per pallet, a spec that had been carried forward year after year on the assumption that “thicker is safer” for high-value medical product. In practice, this meant: 

• Excess material cost on every single pallet, multiplied across thousands of pallets a year 

• More plastic than necessary going into every shipment, with no measurable gain in load protection 

• A specification nobody had re-tested against modern film performance, because it had simply never been flagged as a problem — the loads always arrived intact, so no one asked whether they’d arrive intact with less film 

The challenge wasn’t damaged loads or operational failure — it was invisible overspend baked into a legacy spec that hadn’t kept pace with what modern film could actually do. 

The Solution 

Rather than simply asking “can we use less film,” the team benchmarked the existing 23 micron film against a high-performance grade machine film, engineered with a stronger resin formulation to deliver equivalent or better load containment, puncture resistance, and holding force at a significantly lower gauge. 

The evaluation was run in two stages: 

1. Controlled trial: The high-performance film was run on a single wrap station alongside the incumbent film, testing containment force, puncture resistance, and wrap consistency side by side under the same load conditions. 

1. Validation and rollout: Once the trial confirmed containment performance met or exceeded the existing spec, the film was rolled out across all wrap stations, with wrap machine settings adjusted to the film manufacturer’s recommended tension and pre-stretch profile. 

No changes to wrap equipment were required — only a re-specification of the film itself and a machine settings adjustment. 

The Results 

• Substantial reduction in plastic used per pallet, by re-specing the film gauge to what the load actually required rather than a legacy “just in case” spec 

• No change in load containment or transit damage rates — the high-performance film matched the protective performance of the much heavier film it replaced 

• Meaningful reduction in annual film spend, driven purely by correcting the overspec rather than any change in wrapping behavior or volume 

• Less plastic entering the waste stream per shipment, supporting the site’s broader packaging waste reduction goals 

Why It Worked 

The result wasn’t a compromise between cost and protection — it was proof that the original spec had never been tested against what current film technology could deliver. By benchmarking a high-performance film against real load conditions rather than assumptions, the team was able to right-size the film without right-sizing their confidence in load protection. 

Takeaway 

Legacy packaging specs have a way of sticking around long after the assumptions behind them are worth revisiting — especially in industries where “don’t touch what isn’t broken” is the default mindset. For manufacturers running heavier-gauge machine film out of caution, a proper benchmark against a high-performance grade film can reveal significant, low-risk savings hiding in plain sight.