warehousing | Warehousing Insights | Material Handling Systems - Part 5
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Conveyor Systems: Total Cost of Ownership

September 28, 2010

 

conveyor and pick module

The amount on your purchase invoice isn’t the last time you’ll pay for that conveyor, but those ongoing costs of operations can be dramatically reduced by making good decisions at the point of purchase. Conveyor systems designed for future considerations slash costs and perform better.

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Posted in Conveyor Optimization|

Guide to Forklift Safety for Pedestrians

January 18, 2010

Take a few minutes to watch this video from WorkSafeBC on how to prevent forklift injuries from a pedestrian’s point of view.

As a pedestrian in a forklift environment, it’s your responsibility to keep yourself safe.  Anyone who runs a warehouse or industrial facility understands the dangers, and drivers should be trained. Do you train the pedestrians, the order pickers, the managers, and vendors who sometimes roam your facility and are exposed to forklift traffic? Watch the video. It’s 12 minutes long, and worth every second.

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Posted in Forklift - Pedestrian Safety|

Warehouse Safety: Distracted Forklift Drivers

January 6, 2010

forklift distractions

If you’ve ever stopped at a traffic light, and shuddered at the texting, teenage (or all too often, an adult) driver in the next lane, you probably thought this is an irresponsible person who shouldn’t be behind the wheel. Given statistics that smart phone users are impaired as drunk drivers, it’s a serious and deadly issue; most states have laws specifically forbidding texting on the road. The question is, do you tolerate that kind of distractions for forklift drivers in your warehouse? Should you have the same rules? (Short answer: yes).

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Posted in Forklift - Pedestrian Safety|

How Much Money does Shipping Rivet Shelves Without Decks Save?

December 18, 2009

rivet shelving system

We sell loads of shelving all over the country, and one of the persistent issues is the cost of shipping. In particular, that’s an issue for industrial rivet shelving, which is the most economical type of shelving with the highest capacity. It is easily the most popular industrial shelf type going. For many customers, shipping an all inclusive shelving system is the easiest, most convenient thing — we do it all the time.

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Posted in Storage, Organization & Workstations|

How to Improve Order Picking without Automation

November 20, 2009

picking from flow racks
Cliff Holste at Supply Chain Digest (opens in a new window) has a good piece on ways to improve picking productivity.

Distribution centers will benefit from emerging automated case picking technologies, but those don’t fit for every operation, at every level. They’re also expensive upgrades, so your ROI has to be considered as well.

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Posted in Order Picking & Fulfillment|

How to Design Workbenches & Workstations

September 24, 2009

manifest workbench

It ought to be fairly simple, but specifying the right workbench for your application is something that requires thought and pre-planning if you want to maximize your time and labor. Minor differences in the type of bench can provide critical benefits that add up to major productivity gains over time. Benches aren’t the simple, static equipment many believe. Here are some traits to consider.

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Posted in Storage, Organization & Workstations|

What’s the Most Useless Space in your Warehouse?

May 20, 2009

storage above a warehouse dock door area

Next time you’re standing there wondering where you’re going to put an inbound shipment while your dock is stacked with empty pallets, look at those doors (or at the void above them)  —  the copious space between the top of the doors and the ceiling is unused. Multiply each door by that amount of space, and in many operations, we’re talking serious amounts of unused square footage.

The easy solution: find a use for it with over-dock-door storage. You can’t really rack heavy stuff up there without some significant structure. The best thing to consider is empty pallets, which take up a ton of room and are relatively lightweight. And usually, they’re all over the floor and always in your way. Empty pallets clutter up the shipping & receiving docks or can take up positions in your racks that would be better suited to full pallets of finished goods or incoming shipments.

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Posted in Space Optimization & Planning|

Gravity Conveyor: How Many Skatewheels do You Need?

March 6, 2009

Warehouse

Gravity skate wheel conveyor is probably the most economical conveyor option around for quick, portable movement of lightweight boxes, totes, or trays.

You see it used in shipping & receiving areas, in assembly operations, or as a transitional piece between workstations and powered conveyor lines. You can even slap casters on it for a conveyor that can be rolled in & out of use areas. We even plug it into gravity flow racks to create heavier-duty, FIFO flow storage.

For such a simple piece of conveying equipment — in fact the simplest — errors can and do crop up when it’s ordered incorrectly.

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Posted in Conveyor Optimization|

Warehouse Space Savings: Consolidate from Shelf Bins into Modular Storage

February 14, 2009

shelving system with modular drawers

This is a series of posts we’ll be making about saving space in your facility. There are plenty of ways to better utilize space, and some of them might fit your circumstances while others certainly won’t. In today’s challenging business climate, it is particularly critical to use space wisely in your facility.

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Posted in Space Optimization & Planning|

RMI Announces R-Mark for Welded Wire Rack Decking

February 11, 2009

pallet rack wire decking

The Material Handling Industry of America recently announced that the RMI (Rack Manufacturers Institute) has certified several manufacturers of wire rack decking “R-Mark” compliant, meaning that these companies have conformed to the Institute’s testing and utilization standards.
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Posted in Pallet & Warehouse Racks|

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