Manual palletizing is one of the most common, and most overlooked, inefficiencies in food manufacturing. It happens at the end of every packaging line, shift after shift, and because it has always been done by hand, it rarely gets flagged as a problem worth solving. But the costs are real. Operators performing repetitive lifting throughout an entire shift develop chronic back pain. Throughput is capped by how fast a person can physically move. And as production volumes grow, the only solution available without automation is to find more people willing to do a physically demanding job in a labor market that is becoming increasingly difficult to hire from.