It’s Not All About Moving
By Priya Jestin, Staff Writer
The very name conjures up images of physical objects that need to be moved from place to place. What we don’t realize about the process of material handling is that nowadays, controls are playing an increasingly important role.
So when you think material handling, you cannot but think of conveyors – all kinds of them, then there are automatic guided vehicles; automatic electrified monorails, automated storage and retrieval systems… the list is endless. While you always did have something with which you could handle things, nowadays these devices are actually ‘smart’. What we now have is an array of choices that makes it difficult for any firm to decide what actually fits the bill for its operations.
So how does a company decide what kind of devices it requires to conduct daily operations? Some approaches to material handling are pretty personal. This means if a manager has specific ideas to improve efficiency and reduce effort, s/he gets the firm to make a switch. Then there are firms that need to keep up with technology changes and hence switch over to newer modes of handling materials.
What is interesting in this entire switch game is that the various types of material handling equipment don’t actually go away. This means, there is no wholesale replacement of one type of equipment in favor of another. What happens is a coexistence of sorts.
What is common amongst most firms is that they are quite conservative when it comes to material handling. The reason is not too far to seek – the cost of being wrong is incredible and can even hamper the very existence of a small business.
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