The Material Handling Blog

In an ideal world, all unit loads would be held on standard pallets, in uniform weights and sizes, allowing for easy handling with all kinds of forklift. Unfortunately, that's not the real world - and in many warehouses, standard pallets are the exception.

Many types of goods - for example, pipes, construction materials or metal sheeting - are often quite long, and impossible to fit neatly onto a 1,200 by 800mm pallet. These loads can be difficult to get down warehouse aisles, even if they aren't particularly narrow.

Cantilever racking, solves the storage problem - this kind of racking is open-fronted, meaning there are no vertical bars to block the placement or removal of long goods.

But when you need to move these goods down an aisle, how do you get around the space problem? The simplest and most versatile solution is - with a multi-directional truck.

Forklift trucks are a natural part of everyday material handling. They are so common that it’s easy to believe they have always been there, but surprisingly, the forklift truck is a rather recent innovation…

Sometimes, only the smallest change is needed to make a big difference to your materials handling operation — especially when it affects such a time-consuming operation as order picking (which is also the most expensive process in the handling chain).

Keeping warehouse staff happy, satisfied and motivated is a challenge which warehouse managers face every day. A big part of this challenge is safety - protecting staff from injury is one of the most basic requirements, and the industry has improved greatly in this area in the last few decades.

Getting the right equipment, staff and suppliers can help you achieve your goals, but there's one factor which is just as important - ergonomics.

The material handling trends of the last few decades have helped keep safety high and workplace accidents low, reducing downtime and increasing productivity. But protecting drivers from strain, repetitive movements and unnatural driving positions through forklift truck ergonomics can give similar rewards. 

If you want to find out:

• How an ergonomic forklift can improve driver health and warehouse efficiency
• What the experts say about ergonomic design in the material handling industry
• Where essential controls should be positioned for maximum comfort

 
Then you should click the button below to download the full article. Happy driving!

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.

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.

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. 

An operation like loading and unloading goods can be made much more efficient in various ways, like by using loading bays, or stand-on pallet trucks instead of pedestrian versions. Order picking, a repetive and expensive logistics process, offers even more possibilities for optimisation. But for the third main part of materials handling - the intake and retrieval of entire unit loads within the warehouse - what can you do increase efficiency and productivity?

Everyone could easily lift a package weighing a few kilograms, but what if you had to pick that same package hundreds of times a day, over the course of weeks and months, possibly from hard-to-reach places? You’d probably start feeling the strain quite quickly, and you’d end up hoping you had some equipment or solution to make the job easier.

Making the most efficient use of the available floor space in your warehouse is always important. However, when the density of storage increases, placing and removing unit loads when you need to, typically takes more time.