People who aren’t paying attention are at the most risk, particularly those who walk near and around forklifts. People don’t pay attention because they’re busy, worried about deadlines. Or they’re absorbed in their smart phone, or in a conversation with someone. The reasons vary, but when forklifts are involved, the results can be deadly.
Posted in Forklift - Pedestrian Safety|
2014 is shaping up to be a year of transition for the manufacturing sector, with issues in talent development, an aging work force, the re-shoring of manufacturing in some sectors, and the forward moment of automation taking center stage.
Where can you go for the latest in industrial manufacturing news, trends, research, events, and discussions? Social media is one solution. With roughly one billion registered users, Twitter can be an invaluable resource for discovering what distributors, suppliers, publications, consultants, journalists, bloggers, and industry experts are discussing.
Posted in Manufacturing|
Receiving is an often-overlooked but critical component to warehouse workflow. Receiving mistakes can flow through every other aspect of your operation.
If you can’t quickly and accurately break down landed shipments and send them to effective putaway, you can sabotage every other aspect of the operation. It has a direct impact on inventory accuracy (and security – in fact receiving is an area of particular vulnerability), throughput, and accurate fulfillment. Too little receiving space tends to become a root cause for many errors and throughput headaches.
Posted in Docks & Shipping|
When you work on order picking strategies, knowing the metrics for picking rates may be helpful. Labor productivity is the key to any warehousing or order picking operation, since labor tends to be the largest single cost factor in these operations. It’s critical to understand production rates for processes that absorb labor hours, energy, money, and time.
Posted in Order Picking & Fulfillment|
In its 2011 “Skills Gap in Manufacturing” report, the Manufacturing Institute laid out the situation: as American manufacturing continues to expand, a lack of critical skills in the workforce is becoming an increasingly common limitation. In many places, we see classified ad pages full of jobs for skilled positions like CNC machinists, high-volume assembly technicians, welders, or electricians. With a reported 600,000 unfilled jobs in the manufacturing sector, it’s something that has to be addressed.
Certainly, lower-cost foreign labor is still a drain, but there is little manufacturers can do about that. What can manufacturers do?
Tags: labor, palletizing, ergonomics
Posted in Manufacturing|
We talk safety a lot, mainly because the environment we work in, and the customers we work with use equipment like forklifts and conveyors in areas where interaction with people is unavoidable. We believe the first responsibility we have to our customers, and the first responsibility our customers have to themselves, is safety. Many of the wonderful benefits of material handling equipment comes with the risk of injury. It’s powerful machinery, and people must pick from it, walk near, it or otherwise interact with it.
Tags: Conveyor, conveyor safety
Posted in Safety & Ergonomics|
You want your company to be a leader in your field. You want to provide the best product to your customers at the best price, and cut needless costs, transactions, touches, and clutter that inhibit productivity. The term “lean production system” was coined in 1988, and manufacturers have been honing their operations to conform to lean principles ever since.
It starts with making sure every part of your organization is doing its job well; and is armed by process to execute its mission.
Tags: lean manufacturing, 5S principles
Posted in Manufacturing|
There are two types of pallet rack capacity to take into account: beam and upright. Getting those capacities right is a critical factor in safe, efficient rack operations, so understanding why they are very different numbers is important.
Posted in Pallet & Warehouse Racks|
Small parts are more difficult to count, measure and handle. They tend to cause more errors than case picking or larger component orders. If you are having errors, you should try to define the causes — and the suspects abound. Can you find out what’s causing the errors? Once you do, what happens next? Here are some common causes and solutions to this issue.
Tags: lean warehousing, Order Picking & Fulfillment, 5S principles, error reduction
Posted in Order Picking & Fulfillment|
Conveyor safety should always be a top concern. With more than 50 workplace fatalities a year where conveyors are the primary source of injury and workplace accidents accounting for nearly 25% of all workers’ compensation claims, you must pay attention to industry standard safety practices.
Tags: Safety & Ergonomics
Posted in Conveyor Optimization|
