Automating material handling can improve quality and reduce costs for your company.  Material handling automation can create a safer working enviroment for workers by removing them from potentially dangerous situations.  

• For many companies, the time to automate material handling has arrived. That's because minimizing manual intervention in handling ingredients or components, work-in-process, and finished products can improve quality, productivity and operator well-being, while reducing costs. Forces driving the decision to automate include:
  • Manpower reductions due to downsizing
  • The need to improve operator working conditions by eliminating or minimizing heavy lifting, repetitive motions and noise
  • A desire for faster throughput
  • Customer requirements for more customized products, just-in-time delivery and order entry and receiving via electronic data interchange
  • Quality demands
  • The proliferation of point-of-sale information
  • Avoiding surplus inventory at all levels of the company's supply chain.
  • In the same way that today's downsized work forces are expected to do more with less, material-handling equipment is also increasingly flexible, versatile and compact
• DOCUMENTING QUALITY. Automated material handling can provide a means of documenting the manufacturing process as required for quality programs earning ISO 9000 registration. Such monitoring can not only improve quality, but can also boost throughput by identifying bottlenecks.
• NEWFOUND AGILITY. With real-time point-of-sale information changing the way products are manufactured from a push- to a pull-through on-demand process, there is growing interest in shipping mixed-load pallets and flexible material-handling equipment capable of assembling these customized collations.
• ON THE HORIZON. With 20% to 80% of an item's cost attributable to distribution costs, sales commissions and wholesale and retail markup, improving and integrating segments of the supply chain could mean significant savings. This is putting new demands on material handling to develop "smarter" material-handling devices with self diagnostics to ensure reliable performance. There's also a need to improve manufacturing velocity and transportation system efficiency.
• Using a first-in/first-out (FIFO) system, incoming product rows feed onto individual gondola racks. Once filled, a gondola proceeds to a buffer chain above as the next gondola is filled.
• Another space-saving unit is the Rapidbelt linear overhead handling system from Warner Electric of South Beloit, IL.
• Overhead mounting eliminates support structures and provides unobstructed freedom of movement in the work area.
• Single- or two-axis systems handle loads of up to 1,350 pounds per rail. Heavier loads can be accommodated by a double-rail arrangement.
• Horizontal and vertical bends in a Flex-Link Systems Alpine conveyor from Feeder Systems, of Vista, CA, minimize the floorspace required to convey and accumulate lightweight items such as packaged goods, machine parts, electronic and electric components, food and beverage containers, candies and pharmaceuticals.
• Although they are still too expensive for disposable applications, radio-frequency identification (RFID) systems with read/write tags and on-line sensors are well suited for work-in-process tracking.
• Tags mounted on product or component- handling pallets, tote bins or fixtures can contain a simple identification code or a more detailed portable database providing assembly information and history.
• If a material-handling system is robust enough, it can route a pallet to stop at the steps it needs to and not at others,
• With real-time point-of-sale information changing the way products are manufactured from a push- to a pull-through on-demand process, there is growing interest in shipping mixed-load pallets and flexible material-handling equipment capable of assembling these customized collations.
• As a result, adaptable robots are assuming a larger role in palletizing, especially when multiple infeed conveyors and/or pallet stations are involved.
• The robotic Eagle 50 palletizer/laser-guided AGV combination is designed to simplify end-of-the-line installations by replacing conveyors and elevators. In operation, the laser-guided AGV can supply up to five palletizers with empty pallets and remove full pallets for transport to storage or stretch wrapping.
• The Omni-Turn from Priority One of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, is said to be the first one capable of handling either rigid or soft items.
• This is putting new demands on material handling to develop "smarter" material-handling devices with self diagnostics to ensure reliable performance. There's also a need to improve manufacturing velocity and transportation system efficiency.
• Most essential, however, is an effort to integrate material handling into the manufacturing process and bring information handling and material handling closer together.

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