How Material Handling can be designed to Provide Efficiency and Reliability

Information may not be reliable

How you handle your materials within your factory or plant can directly affect the efficiency and reliability of your operations. It's certainly possible to correlate increased material handling equipment with faster production rates, but are those processes still reliable? Quick and reliable handling is critical when it comes to efficient material handling, particularly when you add in the high demands placed on automation in a variety of today's industries. Higher outputs and bigger volumes are always a priority; therefore, it stands to reason that employing the use of more efficient material handling processes and equipment will make a positive benefit to your bottom line. Just be sure to keep an eye on how reliable those processes end up being.

Improving Efficiency

From state-of-the-art automation solutions to bulk handling systems and heavy lift equipment, you can easily meet or exceed your desired loading and unloading times, waste removal times and bulk goods transportation times. Look for fully-integrated automation solutions that use technology to address your unique business needs. The term "material handling" encompasses all the processes that move, control, store, sort, dispose and protect goods, packages or trash. Getting these items from Point A to Point B quickly yet reliably can present a challenge in regards to distribution, warehousing, packaging, prep work, recycling or cleaning. Automated equipment such as self-dumping hoppers, rotator boxes and release systems can speed up your time to market, helping you in all areas of production planning to allocation of materials. Your goal should be to increase the satisfaction of customers, reduce backups, slash handling costs and reduce delivery times.

Reliable Processes

Efficiency and speed are great, but making sure those systems are also reliable is crucial as well. You could ultimately lose money and increase your production times in the end if the equipment can't be relied on for consistency. One way to ensure reliability is to incorporate material handling equipment that is specific to your industry, whether that's food and beverage, apparel, manufacturing, grocery, general merchandising, healthcare or parcel. For example, if you own or manage a water and sewage treatment plant, the use of a dewatering self-dumping hopper is a wise idea. This equipment can handle up to 6,000 lbs., involving the proper collection and drainage of wet materials, usually available in custom applications for a reduction in operation costs, increase in productivity rates and above all a safe way to handle sewage waste. This type of equipment not only increases efficiency but also contributes to reliable function thanks to superior wear resistance, carbon steel construction and streamlined drainage of anything from pulp and aggregate to waste and water.

Making sure your material handling equipment is operating at max efficiency means constantly taking stock of how reliable each system is to benefit the whole.

About the Author:

This article is written by Mike Genter, who is associated with Roura Material Handling. Roura Material Handling produces a large variety of self-dumping hoppers including durable hoppers, rugged hoppers, ultimate hoppers, behemoth hoppers as well as custom and specialty dumping hoppers for both commercial and industrial use.