Conveyors, like any capital investment have multiple costs. The amount on your invoice is hardly the last time you’ll pay for that conveyor. If a conveyor is correctly specified and designed for future use, significant cost savings can be realized.

The three costs:

• Initial costs – the easiest to understand and quantify. This is the cost of equipment, installation, and controls.
• Operational costs – electrical usage  & pneumatics usage
• Maintenance costs – Spare parts, replacement parts, & labor costs

All of these costs are spread over the conveyor’s useful life, so a formula that might best express what your conveyor will cost is: TCO (total cost of ownership) = IC (initial cost) + OC (operational costs) + MC (maintenance costs)/ useful life of the system.

Higher initial costs may be recouped in lower maintenance and operational costs over time if the right decisions are made when the equipment is specified and ordered. The initial cost savings can be eaten up by higher operating and maintenance costs, but neither of those is as expensive as a system that cannot do the job it was deployed to do. Long term costs can easily outstrip the initial costs. What are the real, long term costs and what can you do to control them?

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Implementing an energy-efficient lighting system can make your facility much brighter overall, and in particular, it can brighten those dark ‘canyons’ between rack rows.

It also saves you money on utility costs. In a large distribution center, the daily cost savings is significant, even before you factor in enhanced productivity due to an overall better working environment. But it gets better: Under the 2005 EPACT law, you can deduct the entire cost of a new lighting system, up to 60 cents a square foot if the system reduces lighting power density below he maximum allowable lighting power densities listed in ASHRAE/IES Standard 90.1-2001, and if a few other requirements are met. This typically results in a much lower cost of ownership and a very quick return on investment.

Oh, and combined with other energy saving upgrades to your facility, that 60 cents could climb to $1.80 a square foot.

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Environmental awareness, sustainability, ‘green’ or carbon foot printing, no matter what term you use today, everyone and every facility is aware that their processes need improving.

Whether you are in pharmaceutical, beverage, food, automotive, distribution, manufacturing or thousands of other industries today, there has to be some way to track and/or reuse what is not used within your daily operations. Many progressive industries are designing internal reclamation processes for utilization and recycling of goods they don’t need or are waste.

This white paper (PDF, opens a new window) explains various methods for removing refuse from your facility in a more organized, more controlled manner by utilizing conveyors.

Sustainability and economic considerations get along so well that you might as well call them best friends. Saving energy is one step in the process, but that’s not the end of it. For instance, Hytrol’s E24 and E24EZ conveyor lines are a good example. Aside from providing a much-needed alternative to convenitonal 24-volt conveyor rollers, these conveyors have immediate and significant sustainability advantages.

How green does conveyor get?

In the case of E24, we’re talking about energy savings as high as 60%.  But then we get into raw materials savings: An E24 conveyor lasts about 6 times as long as a conventional roller at 125,000 hours life expectancy (24/7 runtime). That’s less steel and power used to manufacture it. E24EZ conveyors have a built-in that allows the conveyors to enter an energy-saving “sleep mode” for the ultimate in quiet, efficient, sustainable powered roller conveyor. Because the conveyor can use only one motor for all widths, it’s excellent for reducing needs for specialized, energy-consuming motors. With 3 moving parts, there are many fewer opportunities for parts failure, and the inefficiency that comes with it.