The Material Handling Education Foundation, Inc. (MHEFI) announces the establishment of the Willard P. Heddles Memorial Scholarship Fund. Heddles, chairman and CEO of Tiffin Metal Products, Inc. and former member of the MHI Roundtable and Board of Governors, passed away on January 31, 2017, from injuries sustained in a motor vehicle accident. He also served on the Board of Directors ...

Manufacturing and supply chain professionals gathered in record numbers in Chicago at the recent ProMat 2017, the largest material handling and logistics trade expo in North and South America. With registrations of 4,872 attendees, show producer MHI announced a 20 percent attendance jump over 2015. The four-day event, April 3-6, covered 384,000 square feet of exhibit space on two show ...

What’s your initial reaction when you hear the Internet of Things (IoT), Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) or Industrie/Industry 4.0? Are you excited because it represents an unparalleled opportunity to make things better? Or are you defensive because you fear that robots are taking over the world and will significantly degrade humanity? Well, I don’t have the answer to that ...

Many of us, myself included, are too mired in our day-to-day activities that we can’t afford to give ourselves the time to ponder what the future holds for us. But imagine taking a look around the current landscape, identifying the emerging technological, consumer, workforce and infrastructure trends, and extrapolating how those trends would influence what the year 2030 would have ...

Optimism about the U.S. economic outlook that increased at the end of 2016, strengthened even further in the first quarter of 2017. U.S. consumer confidence rose sharply in the first quarter and data from the ISM Manufacturing and Non-Manufacturing purchasing manager indices (PMIs) and the MHI Business Activity Index (BAI) was positive. Although there had been downside risks to U.S. ...

Items often need to be moved within a factory or warehouse. When workers lift and carry them manually the work is hard and subjects workers to serious risk of injury. If the items are heavy, these tasks can take multiple workers. Now there is a faster, safer way to do this work by using workstation crane systems, also known as ...

More and more end-customers are demanding that automated material handling solutions be integrated to address the “full stream” of order fulfillment and bridge the gaps created by the islands of automation. In the past, MHI member companies would often work with customers seeking a single solution, such as pick-to-light or voice-directed picking, to address a specific fulfillment area or process, ...

If there is one thing that sets the Crane Manufacturers Association of America (CMAA) apart from other industry groups, it is the preparation and marketing of its standards.  The group takes this extremely seriously and is working to be the go-to resource for crane information and expertise.  Recently, MHI Solutions spoke with industry stakeholders to better understand how leading crane ...

Optimism about the U.S. economic outlook increased at the end of 2016, after the U.S. presidential election. Expectations of Reaganesque corporate and individual tax cuts that would be accompanied by FDR-era infrastructure spending sent equities higher—and improved the potential for investment. While optimism about U.S. growth improved at the end of 2016 and the beginning of 2017, global growth expectations ...