Posts Tagged ‘Material Handling’
Material Handling Shows on the Card in Coming Time
Things are well set for new material handling shows to be organized at South East and South West regions of the UK. The ShD South East and ShD South West are the second and third brand new material handling shows of regional importance organized by IMHX organizer, Quartz.
As the both shows as ShD South East at Maidstone’s Kent Showground on 17th September and ShD South West on 12th definitely would be going to be of great help for local firms which deals into any type of good and product commodities. There, many programs are scheduled during the course of both of the exhibitions. The most important of the events are free seminars and lectures delivered by leading members of the UKWA (United Kingdom Warehousing Association).
The issues as covered under seminar could are handling in-house theft, implementing energy-saving initiatives, strategies for avoiding the rate liability of empty warehouses, top tips for designing a successful warehouse and how to recruit the best logistics professionals. Presentation on each of the topic is set with time frame of 30 minutes with a question and answer session.
Both exhibitions have live demonstration areas for displaying innovative ideas to reduce cost and maximize supply chain efficiency. There a wide range of companies will be showcasing their inventions at the show like fork-lift firms Aisle-Master, Briggs Equipment, GC Hurrell & Co Ltd, Linde, Narrow Aisle, Nissan, Still, Translift and TVH, as well as traction battery specialist, Norco. Visitors with an interest in packaging will be able to talk to packaging specialists FROMM, Schoeller Arca Systems, Easypack, Sealed Air Ltd and Ranpak. Also present will be shrink-wrap machinery suppliers Shrinkfast and AETNA.The distribution network PalletForce will be represented, along with emissions reduction solutions provider Envirosafe and explosion protection specialist Pyroban.
For more info and registration, log onto http://www.shdregionalshows.biz.
Subscribe to the comments for this postKeeping Safe from the Ground Up
There always remains an opportunity for an accident in ware housing and material management handling from the floors to the loading dock. And companies irrespective of industry and location are required to give an appropriate and safe environment for their employees, especially in active warehouse and distribution centers. In a recent data as released by Bureau of Labor Statistics from the all occurred occupational accidents, one forth happened at jobs related to transportation and material handling jobs.
Recently, two New England distribution centers charged with fine of $100,000 from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) when a worker got injured and repeated violation were found. There are many places that are prone to accidents in warehouses like unguarded conveyor, large unstable storage racks, open sided work platforms which led to falls, crushing injuries and electrocution as told by OSHA.
Ted Fitzgerald, OSHA spokesman for New England and New York, said in materials handling, keeping safe can involve a number of issues, including ergonomics, lift truck precautions, machine guarding and wiring. “It’s a matter of being aware of the hazards associated with work processes, equipment and the nature of the workplace and determining what the required safeguards are,” Fitzgerald said.
However, this fatality for ware house safety can be sorted out by keeping up in the mind a number of measures in the mind. The American Society of Safety Engineers and American society for Testing and Materials prepared a 200 page document give escape routes to the accident by giving ideas on slip, trip and fall prevention, floor choices, spill cleanup and layout can make a warehouse or other facility safer. Sometimes due to lack of attention on part of workers these fatalities occurs at ware houses and material storage centers.
Increase productivity by shifting pallets of racks in Warehouse
The magic words for productivity, that 80% of it comes from the 20% is correctly applicable for floor space in many warehouse and industrial operations. You can save ample space in your ware house while choosing for rack system with big open spaces.
You can choose racks for higher productivity items if your entire inventory does not get adjusted into the pallets. Could you move each-pick or case-pick operations off of floor pallets or static shelving into flow storage embedded in your racks?
The other goods that can be easily adjusted into the pallets without disturbing the entire set up are higher velocity items. For example by keeping free-standing products in flow storage instead of keeping them on the top of rack or on the floor you can save higher cost of packaging. This way you can increase picking productivity as well as accuracy. It puts away cartons from the ground, improves over ergonomics and frees up that floor space for other uses.
Further, completely removing rows of shelving by shifting their contents to flow storage in your racks you can find new space as well can increase packaging efficiency. This way a bit manipulation in shelving up to 20% can leads up to the improvement of productivity to the range of 80%.
According To A Report $200B Required To Switch To Hydrogen Fuel
There is vast possibility as according to the analysts of ending the dependence of United States as well as global countries on Petrol and switching to the mode of Hydrogen Powered vehicles, however, a recent report of the National Academics of Science has revealed realization of this hypothesis to be far from being achievable.
In the report entitled as, “Transitions to Alternative Transportation Technologies: A Focus on Hydrogen,” as according to the National Academics of sciences it would took nearly an exaggerated amount of $200 billion as for completely transforming from oil to hydrogen fuel on steps like R&D, vehicle deployment, and needed infrastructure. The share of said amount at $55 billion is put on government for time period spanning between 2008 and 2023 and the private investment is incurred around $145 billion for the same time frame and period of time.
Despite the initial level of research into the development of fuel cell and hydrogen production technology there are certain barricades like cost of vehicles and lack of infrastructure that are first required get solve for a proper distribution of it to a customer. Yet these problems can be overcome with the help of R&D and support of the automotive industry. As further stated in the report hydrogen-powered vehicles will make a positive impact within the warehouses and distribution centers for lift trucks, forklifts, and turret trucks, among other vehicles, yet there a lot of work is yet needed to be done.
Manufacturers Switching to IT to Maximize Their Profits
While in this period of global recession every company is trying to devise new methods to cut costs and remain competitive and survived, IT has emerged as a better way for companies to cut cost, build longer and more complex supply chains to accommodate it to respond faster to changing demand.
A manufacturer enabled with technology can communicate in better way with far flung suppliers can manage shorter product life cycles and collaborate more emphatically with its business partners. ARC Advisory Group a consultant in manufacturing technology predicted the growth of IT budgets in manufacturing sector is inevitable as more and more companies would use IT to support supply chain processes as to run their manufacturing operations in a better way.
But there also problem thrives for hundreds of manufactures globally as regarding containing algorithms for analyzing manufacturing processes. Now companies are paying attention on the example of Japanese company Toyota’s example where it adopted lean thinking by cutting out waste, put emphasized on making small regular improvements and focused more on customer service. They are facing one other problem as the analytical software have become cheaper though business analyst find it very difficult to handle flood of data to interpret pending before them.
Still big investment ERPs are with 40% of manufacturer’s but the interest is now declining towards relatively small projects with a payback of year or two. The new trend of getting software prepared on order bringing many industries to closer to the Information Technology. As manufactures now can get supplies at their facilities as soon as get an order by phone or on internet as they can inform to their supplier instantly.
Moreover, in present period of the competitive edge every company is trying to go ahead of others while using improving over their Supply Chain. All the modern and coming supply chains aims to keep the amount of produce as low as possible in chain while tracking it through all the possible locations and IT can solve their this problem in this regard to a greater extent. To handle these problem technologies like radio frequency identification (RFID), bar codes and voice recognition has evolved as a very appropriate solution to the problem. However, whatever may be the pattern and use of technologies IT would definitely help companies to gain profits.
FBI - Yet To Develop A Proper Database Management System
How lack of technology implementation and excessive database can mess up with each other was recently reflected in FBI’s Inspector General’s 120 page audit report in which FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigations) is presented in bad picture for not accomplishing time framed national security name checks in support of immigration and naturalization activities.
As from many of the reasons mentioned in the report for not completing the objective, the more important ones are quoted as “outdated and inefficient technology, personnel who have limited training, overburdened supervisors and inadequate quality assurance measures.” Interestingly, it is reflected that in many cases FBI is still depend on manual work for collecting data and records.
In United States any issue related to immigration and especially name check requires approval from an FBI clerk who further asks for information from 265 separate FBI record locations. The Washington Times was the first newspaper that published news about Audit Faults Delays in Immigrant Name Checks
However, there are many steps in accomplishing name check request depending on number of files an analyst must obtain, the location where a file is kept and amount of information that is contained in a file. In case file is placed locally, he can have access to it in matter of days. In case file is at any of the 265 different FBI locations then the information can be requested from that site. An electronically available file is very easy to retrieve.
For the files, which are not saved, electronically, lots of time on the part of analysts gets invested into searching through dispersed paper files. As mentioned in the report, “FBI files are currently stored at one of approximately 265 locations, including the FBI’s Headquarters facility, several warehouses around the Washington Metropolitan area, in records centers either operated by the NARA or commercial concerns, four large Information Technology Center facilities on the east and west coast, at each of the 56 field offices, many of the larger of our 400 resident agencies, and at legal attaché offices worldwide. This equates to approximately 1.8 million cubic feet of decentralized records storage, which provides some unique challenges to our efforts to be optimally effective and efficient.”
But there is a possible solution to the problem as also advised by FBI is central records repository where all the paper files can be kept on and further all active files can be stored, electronically, so it provides a very viable solution to the problem of data storing and management.
General Hydrogen’s Hydricity Pack Power Systems
General Hydrogen’s Hydricity Packs are complete fuel cell systems. They directly replace lead-acid batteries in industrial vehicles and other applications. Hydricity Packs generate electrical power through a chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen. They also produce only heat and pure water vapor in the entire process. Hydricity Packs can be used indoors.
The function of Hydricity Packs is unique. In the beginning, hydrogen from the storage tank and air from the atmosphere are humidified before entering the fuel cell stack. The humidified gases pass through the fuel cell stack and produce electricity, heat and water. Excess water vapor and heat produced in the process are exhausted through a radiator into the atmosphere. The electricity produced by the stack is conditioned to the required current and voltage. It is then delivered through the outlet to the lift truck motor or other electric load. An energy storage bank provides supplemental power when energy is required for lifting. Finally, when the hydrogen fuel is used up, the hydrogen storage tank is refilled by the operator using General Hydrogen’s fueling system.