A rash of M&A announcements begs the question: why is materials handling so hot all of a sudden?

JDA Software Group Inc. announces plans to acquire i2 Technologies. Nova-Tech announces it will assume most of Transbotics’ assets. IBM announced plans to acquire ILOG.  These recent acquisition announcements have one thing in common: materials handling.

Materials handling is key to a healthy supply chain, and investors are bringing new visibility to that fact. Of course, the strategic importance of our field is nothing new...Read More

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The Material Handling Industry of America  will propagate materials handling education across the country to ensure the availability of a skilled, plentiful labor pool.

Readers of this magazine may not care that MHIA recently received an outstanding business partnership award from the Rock Hill, SC School District for its service in promoting material handling & logistics educational programming in high schools and technical schools.

Modern readers do stand to benefit from this prize, however.

It starts with the establishment of ...Read More

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While gathering material for Modern’s October Lift Truck Tips column on “Leasing vs. Buying,” Mitsubishi Forklift Trucks threw me a curve. They just launched a promotion looking for “the oldest Mitsubishi forklift truck still in operation today.” The purpose of this “Keeps on Running” contest is to find forklifts that have “outlived expectations.”

To qualify, contestants must own and currently operate a small Internal Combustion (IC) cushion tire Mitsubishi forklift truck, with a capacity range of 2,000 lbs – 6,500 lbs. Eligible models include the entire FGC10-FGC33 model lineup, the current ‘N’ Generation and al...Read More

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In this multi-tasking world, workers are dividing their attention among too many masters and not giving anything of value to any of them. Look at how we gather information. We Google it. It flows into our stream of thought but doesn't empty into our body of knowledge. Learning is giving way to problem solving. Once a problem is solved, we move on to the next problem--discarding whatever factoid was used in that solution.

This breeds ignorance and compromises safety, especially among the younger generation of employees who are old hands at multi-tasking but new to materials handling. Many bring valuable skills but bad habits to the workplace. As a result, employers need to train and retrain their people on how to safely work in an environment that demands their focus.&nbs...Read More

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I just interviewed Leon McGinnis, a professor of manufacturing systems at Georgia Tech. I figured he’d be just the right person to talk about the future of materials handling for our September special issue on that topic. What he told me tells me this field has a lot of work to do.

He’s been waging a campaign to try to get the various material handling engineering disciplines to talk to each other using a standard engineering language. You mean they don’t, I asked? Apparently not. Not like all the disparate disciplines that contribute to the making of an integrated circuit.

“With an integrated cir...Read More

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Supply chains are being sullied by our dirty carbon footprints. That’s what the newspapers tell me, anyway. They’re quoting the talking-head environmentalists who make a living being quoted. Many in this quote choir are scientists. But there’s another choir of scientists singing in dissonance. One of them is John Coleman, founder of the Weather Channel. He sang a less-heard tune before the San Diego Chamber of Commerce recently.

“The battle against fossil fuels has controlled policy in this country for decades,” he said. “So now the shortage they created has sent gasoline prices soaring. And, it has lead to the folly of ethanol. ...  The ethanol folly is also creat...Read More

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These are not easy times to find a lot of good talent to work in your distribution center. As we’ve discussed in this blog before, kids in school aren’t drawn to distribution as a career. Some people are though, because they see it as a lucrative source of cash.

I’m talking about crooks. Distribution centers are a prime target for supply chain criminals, especially in a tough economy, where easy money draws even people who thought they were honest into a web of deceit.

Gang members and organized crime groups can either infiltrate your organization or recruit from within it. They know how to bypass security camer...Read More

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I had lunch last week with a distribution manager for a major grocery chain in the Northeast Ohio area. We got to talking about his use of sophisticated technology, and he told me he’s concerned that it’s a mixed bag of blessings for users like him.

On the positive side, it does offer productivity gains. And it does help interest young workers in distribution center jobs—for a while. On the negative side, he’s concerned that employers tend to use technologies like pick to light and pick to voice as a crutch. With these systems telling employees exactly what to do, without any independent thinking on their part, we risk breeding an apathetic workforce, he fears. Their brains could get flabby.

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The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) hasn’t been getting favorable media coverage lately—at least from the Wall Street Journal. An article appeared last week stating that many workplace injuries go uncounted. It cited a professor of medicine at Michigan State who noted that reported injuries have declined over the years while fatalities have not. Other sources say employees are encouraged not to report injuries.

An OSHA spokesperson told WSJ she disagrees that OSHA depends on employers to supply injury information, saying OSHA conducts 250 record-keeping audits of employers each year, and 90% of these accurately recorded inj...Read More

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My fellow blogger, Bob Trebilcock, just posted a Briefing on load building. It’s all about making best use of space and transportation dollars. I have a similar story to tell about space efficiency and transportation dollars, but the transportation I’m talking about goes on inside your building and it’s powered by electricity.

Most of you have been using electric transportation for years—in the form of forklifts. What does this have to do with space efficiency? Think how much space and energy is devote to keeping those vehicles running. You have a battery changing room and you pump a lot of human energy into pushing and pulling batteries in and out of those vehicles every day. But what about the electrical energy you’re pumping into those batteri...Read More

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If you want to see true craftsmanship in making silk purses out of sows’ ears, look to a logistics pro. The sow’s ear I’m referring to is the trend of carrying more and more inventory. This used to be a sign of weakness and cause for shame because it indicated you didn’t have a good handle on supply chain information. Now managing more inventory seems to be the new “best practice.”

I was on my way to Sacramento to attend the “Greening the Supply Chain” Conference this week and read a New York Times article I knew I’d have to mention during my panel on “Best Practices f...Read More

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Although I’m still feeling a little jet-lagged after returning from my trip to Germany to attend CeMat, I had enough energy to file a news report on our site. I also had a leftover tidbit to share.

While walking through one of the exhibits featuring a miniload AS/RS, one of the exhibitor’s officers noted some differences he perceives between U.S. and European approaches to big systems projects. For example, he said that in the U.S., for miniload storage systems, his company uses cold rolled steel instead of hot rolled, and they pre-fabricate the components instead of doing it at the jobsite. He notes that in the U.S., systems tend to be built to spec at the construction site. European companies take a more modular approach to materials handling syst...Read More

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