When you hear the words vending machine, what is the first thing that comes to your mind? Vending machines are often looked at as distributors of candy and soda, but hey come in a much wider variety.

For 99.99% of people, safety gloves were never top of mind. As companies look for better ways to manage resources and consumables, some have turned to vending machines. Whether the products dispensed are keyboards and power cords like at Facebook or drill bits and saw blades like at NASA, the boundaries of vending machines are now nearly endless.

Why would your place of business utilize a vending machine for nontraditional products?

Inventory management

If your company wants to manage personal protection equipment (PPE) inventory, the typical options aren’t very robust and do not provide insight into the data. With a vending machine system, each employee uses a swipe card or PIN to access the system. This not only helps track inventory and usage rates, but it also makes it harder for employees to abuse the system. Safety gloves, earplugs, and various items tend to walk away from supply areas easily.

PPE

Cost reduction

Ancillary items a business provides to its employees can be difficult to keep out of the employees’ homes. A vending machine only allows an employee to take what he or she needs to complete his or her job. This type of system is much more cost effective to manage than other methods of checking out supplies. The other methods usually include some form of paperwork or requests to be filed with department heads. If you need a little convincing of the cost reduction this may cause check out our blog posts.

Employee morale

At first glance, you might think that requiring employees to swipe a badge or use a code to access daily items would hurt employee morale by showing them you don’t trust them. The opposite usually happens. The cool factor of the vending machines outweighs any of the big brother thoughts employees may have.

Do you have items that could be placed into a vending machine instead of being wasted? Would you like us to evaluate your operation to determine if vending machines can improve your facility?

Contact our Automation Specialist, Tom Masters, at 317-938-3591 to discuss vending options today.

Curious about our process?

Learn how FlexPAC saved a business 11% and
reduced their hand injuries by 34% through switching hand protection.