Manufacturing

When you mix forklift traffic with unguarded, elevated surfaces, you face a serious risk of injury or worse. You can’t operate a busy loading dock without forklifts, but you can design docks to reduce the risk for forklift operators — and the industry could always improve its safety record.

What’s the biggest expense at your warehouse or distribution center? If your operation is like most, the answer’s probably order picking: Research suggests that order picking makes up between 50 and 75 percent of warehouse operating costs. If you want to build a more efficient operation, then, look for ways to improve order picking productivity.

Electrical wholesalers face unique material handling challenges that require unique material handling solutions. Your standard utility cart is useless in the face of light fixtures, wire coils, or bundles of rigid conduit. An unmodified forklift can’t lift a loaded steel cable reel.

Material handling equipment doesn’t operate in a vacuum. A forklift is only useful to the degree that it interacts with the things and people around it: operators, loads, other material handling equipment, the physical layout of your facility, and more. To get the most value out of material handling costs, then, it may not be enough to simply buy a new machine. You also need a plan for integrating new solutions into your overarching material flow.

If you’re looking for ways to improve throughput while embracing the best practices of ergonomics, custom lift tables may be the key.

The key piece of material handling equipment that runs the global supply chain isn’t a forklift, an automated guided vehicle, or even the mighty pallet itself. It’s the cart. Automation is spreading slowly, and most distribution centers, warehouses, and retail outlets can’t function without a workforce of order pickers and a fleet of sturdy, reliable carts.

Supply chain disruption wasn’t just a pandemic phenomenon, as it turns out. As the world transitions to its new, post(ish)-pandemic normal, grocery leaders continue to worry about keeping food on the shelves. In fact, the industry’s concern has only grown as the pandemic has receded.

Passenger cars aren’t the only mode of transportation switching from gas to battery power. Light commercial vehicles—delivery vans, work pickups, cabover trucks—represented just 24,000 of the U.S.’s electric vehicles in 2021. By 2030, they’re expected to grow to nearly 4 million units. That means many fleet owners are currently trying to figure out how to make the transition. A big part of that project will be creating charging infrastructure.

Across industries, fleet managers are making plans for electric vehicle (EV) charging stations. They may be municipalities converting bus fleets to electric; distributors upgrading delivery fleets; or manufacturers switching trucks or material handling vehicles to run on electricity. These managers of industrial EV fleets may already be familiar with a decades-old electric vehicle technology: Forklifts.

Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standard 1910.176(b) requires employers to store materials securely. “Storage of material shall not create a hazard,” the standard says. Complying with this standard can be a challenge for products that seem designed to roll away—as is the case with pipes of all sizes and materials.