When purchasing new forklift trucks, it's tempting to get caught up comparing different options on the purchase price alone. The graphic above should hopefully show you why that's not the best option.
Lithium-ion, or Li-ION batteries are everywhere these days — in your smartphone, in your laptop, possibly even on your bicycle or in your car. However, they're probably not in the forklift trucks your company uses for materials handling.
"The representation of the behaviour or characteristics of one system through the use of another system, especially a computer program designed for the purpose."
When it comes to making efficient use of space in your warehouse, mobile racking is one of the leading options. With this storage system, the racking itself stands on motor-driven wheels which move in rails built into the floor.
All trucks require maintenance sometimes, especially in high-intensity materials handling operations. The important thing is how quickly you can get the truck back in operation afterwards. This is where your service supplier's first visit fix rate becomes important.
Proper forklift training can achieve things that every warehouse manager wants – increased safety, better employee satisfaction and retention, and heightened productivity, amongst many other things. However, good training comes at a price, and involves taking time out of the working day, so there’s often people in an organization who refuse to prioritise it.
When planning a new warehouse, there's a huge amount of different factors that have to be considered - the type of items being stored, the available floor space and height in the building itself, and the correct storage system that will both maximise the use of the space available but also make it easy to access pallets.
The UK is scheduled to leave the EU at 11pm UK time on Friday, 29 March 2019, although if all 28 EU members agree it can be postponed. As a business, do you want to postpone your materials handling operation?
The warehouse floor certainly isn't the most exciting part of a materials handling operation, but it's the part on which everything else is built — and flooring-related problems can be a big safety hazard.
With proper service and maintenance, a high-quality forklift truck can put in years of service, even in a busy materials handling operation. And depending on the unique requirements of your operation, an older used machine could potentially do the job just as well as a brand new truck.
