Schneider Packaging allows material handling customers to learn before they leap

Schneider Packaging Equipment Co. Inc., which makes case packing, sealing, and palletizing equipment for consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies, said today it has opened a training lab where customers can learn to use the company's material handling equipment before installing it in their own facilities.

Visitors to the Brewerton, N.Y.-based Schneider's upstate headquarters can choose from courses on topics such as Schneider and FANUC robotics; pallet-generation software; troubleshooting programmable logic controllers (PLCs); and an introduction to servo motors, Schneider said.

Schneider will also use the lab to train employees and certify technicians on features such as a miniature robotic palletizing cell.

The program allows customers to take classroom courses and get hands-on experience with complex technologies without the risk of slowing down their production lines by deploying unfamiliar equipment, Jim Kent, Schneider's director of aftermarket services, said in a statement.