Typically, you see Vertical Lifts deployed in heavy industrial settings. They’re frequently used in multilevel facilities, in manufacturing plants, or paired with a mezzanine. Cisco-Eagle’s Houston office broke that mold by implementing a lift in a unique application: to help the University of Texas marching band access the field.
Tags: Material Handling, pflow, vrc, Lifts
Posted in Lifting & Lift Systems|
Push back rack systems are excellent high density storage solutions — perhaps the most economical way to squeeze space out of a crowded warehouse. All loads are stored and retrieved from the same aisle. This reduces the number of aisles needed in a facility, freeing up more space for storage. Aisles can take a great deal of space up in a typical warehouse, so by implementing a pushback pallet rack system, you essentially swap selectivity for space. Push back rack systems provide a Last-In-First-Out (LIFO) inventory rotation, so you have to be certain your load fits. If it does, congratulations — you’ve just saved a lot of space.
But there are issues that can arise when pushback rack is inappropriately specified or utilized.
Posted in Pallet & Warehouse Racks|
The Material Handling Industry of America has posted a video that may be helpful if you are starting the process of “greening” your supply chain.
Baby steps are important, especially at the plant level. For instance, in a recent Cisco-Eagle white paper (PDF), we point out the value of energy efficient conveyor motors. A thousand feet of conveyor outfitted with energy efficient motors could cut enough energy costs over five years to pay for 90% of the cost of the equipment. Also, besides its money savings and “green” profile, you are also saving on heat, which means the equipment may require less maintenance, and endure less wear and tear. It’s a win-win.
Tags: Sustainability
Posted in Warehousing & Distribution|
When things are staged at the dock, whether inbound or scheduled to be picked up, they’re particularly at risk for pilferage.
Any operation that stores, ships or receives valuable items is at risk of being hit – or is already being hit to some degree. Thieves working at a shipping dock may simply wait until after a supervisor finished checking outbound shipments and add more to them before they depart. Since the shipments can sit on the docks for 90 minutes or more, pilferers have time to work on this. And it’s extremely difficult to detect. When thieves place extra cases onto staged pallets and those can ship out on trucks driven by colluding drivers.
Tags: inventory control, security, Industrial Security
Posted in Security|
Leaving a dock door open all day is an invitation to have someone stroll your aisles, check out your inventory, and perhaps take something. Most busy operations, particularly in good weather situations, leave those doors open. Often, the crew is busy with actual work; they don’t have the time to monitor visitors, delivery drivers, service providers, and every other person who strolls in.
Tags: Material Handling, security, wire security cages, Industrial Security, wire partitions
Posted in Docks & Shipping|
There isn’t enough room at your average industrial workstation. In fact, many order pickers, packers, shippers, and other professionals might tell you that you could have a 10′ long workbench, and they’d still be squeezed for space. In a busy operation, it’s a constant battle between availability of materials and space for doing the actual work. So what’s the solution? A larger workbench top?
Tags: ergonomics, workbenches, order fulfillment, industrial safety, workstations
Posted in Storage, Organization & Workstations|
Achieving more with less is a core goal of most businesses. In the warehousing and industrial world, that means building more, shipping more, doing more – controlling more – with fewer resources. The typical issue is labor in many of these operations. It takes people to run a shipping operation, and plenty of them.
“In economically challenging times like now, you’re being asked to produce more per person than ever,” said Cisco-Eagle’s CEO, Warren Gandall. “You’ve probably had to let people go. You may have shut down some areas, cancel contracts, cut a shift, and take the steps necessary to emerge from this downturn. But the big question is, how do you emerge stronger?”
Tags: Material Handling, lean manufacturing, supply chain operations, warehouse productivity, labor costs
Posted in Material Handling|
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.
Tags: Conveyor, warehousing, Material Handling, Hytrol
Posted in Conveyor Optimization|
Three areas – picking, packing and returns – incur anywhere from 60% to 80% of labor costs in your typical distribution operation. 60% of the average pickers’ time is spent walking. Not picking, not packing, not checking for quality and accuracy – walking. This is an activity that cannot add value to your operation or to your customers, so you should strive to eliminate it whenever possible. Not only does it waste time, it makes people tired, and tends to cause a loss in focus and can increase error rates.
Tags: product slotting, carton flow racks, ergonomics, order fulfillment, labor
Posted in Order Picking & Fulfillment|
Safety in warehouses tends to be greatly about the interactions between forklifts, pallet racks, people and stored products. This list of rack safety tips is part of our ongoing efforts to help warehouses operate safely and efficiently.
Tags: Material Handling, Pallet Rack, warehouse safety, storage, industrial accident prevention
Posted in Pallet & Warehouse Racks|
