Materials Handling
Materials Handling is not merely hardware equipment assembled together to correct a short term productivity problem somewhere within the operation. It should be viewed as a total system” and be integrated into a comprehensive manufacturing plan to achieve the be
st results.
In some manufacturing organisations the cost of handling material can average at 20% to 30% of the total labour cost.
Many times it is well to compare your material handling operating ratio, which is material handling labour to total labour, to other companies within your industry. This is a good indication of where you stand relative to mechanisation, automation, or the need to look into some method of improving your total productivity.
There certainly are many symptoms that can be found if your materials handling is not efficient including:
• Piles of material in various departments on the floor
• Queuing up of trucks, dollies, pallets and totes
• Non-standardised containers
• Excessive manual handling and re-handling
• Long movements
• Unbalanced sequences of operation
• Operators waiting for material handling equipment
• Excessive temporary storage
Although materials handling incorporates many individual components such as loading and unloading, QA, picking, packing and palletising, it requires analysing and understanding the total process in light of the objectives required.
A successful program of mechanisation or automation is more dependent upon the steps taken to implement it than the equipment itself. If the preparatory phases are done correctly, the integration of the equipment should be seamless.
Exactly what is a system? That is not easy to define because it means different things to different people. Webster defines it as “set of facts, principles, rules, etc., classified or arranged in a regular or orderly form so as to show a logical plan, linking the various parts”.
A more appropriate definition is “A material handling system is one which requires the assembling of pertinent data, analysing that data in light of the problem, and then applying material handling principles so as to produce and organisationally integrate a plan for achieving the expected results."
This in itself sets forth some of the steps that are required to properly define and solve the material handling problem. Unfortunately, the system concept has been abused in the past. Anyone who has a few products that fit together can claim it’s a system and frequently do. This makes it difficult to really differentiate between what might be termed a system as we’ve defined it, and what is merely hardware equipment assembled to correct a short term productivity problem somewhere within the operation.
Machinery Automation & Robotics
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