Author Archives: Robin Lamerson

Towable Industrial Carts

There is a trend in the manual materials handling (MMH) industry to utilize towable industrial carts rather than fork trucks as a solution for moving materials within a facility. Let’s examine the advantages of towable carts for moving materials in some industrial environments. Better visibility and improved ergonomics When a forklift operator moves a load of materials, they are seated behind ...

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Dynamic Product Valuation

Dynamic product valuation; are B2B and B2C ready to value their products like commodities—where accessibility, deliverability, location and availability are considered on parity with the intrinsic value of the product produced? Or—SHOULD they value their products as commodities? It depends, says Shana Relle, marketing director, global marketing—logistics and material handling team at MHI member Intralox LLC. “As the importance of ...

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Understanding the Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems of Tomorrow

In virtually every major manufacturing and distribution sector, automated storage and retrieval systems (AS/RS) are employed. Equipment and controls that handle, store and retrieve materials under a defined degree of automation continue to grow in demand. To better understand what companies are looking for when it comes to selecting an AS/RS solution from the relatively simple manually controlled order-picked machines ...

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Standards and Why You Should Be Involved in their Development

As we brace ourselves for the 2016 elections and the onslaught of negative political advertising that will inevitably ensue, I think it is worthwhile to discuss a “good news” story in legislative history. In 1970, the Occupational Health and Safety (OSH) Act was signed into law. Within the OSH Act is the General Duty Clause, which states, in part, “each ...

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The Panama Canal Expansion

Global trade patterns are expected to dramatically shift due to the recently expanded Panama Canal. The new set of locks, which opened in June, nearly triple the capacity of ships transiting the canal, from those able to carry 5,000 containers to up to 14,000 containers. Traditionally, West Coast ports have handled about two-thirds of container cargo, which is then moved ...

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The Growing Role of 3PLs

“Today’s 3PL is not your grandfather’s 3PL,” said J. Paul Dittman, executive director, Global Supply Chain Institute at the University of Tennessee. “3PLs have expanded dramatically within the fundamentals of transportation and warehousing, but they’ve gone much beyond that. It’s no longer a guy who operates the warehouse for you; it’s a whole range of services that many companies are ...

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Building Supply Chain Sustainability

Although sustainability has been a buzzword throughout supply chains since the dawn of the new millennium, the push to implement greener facility designs and practices has ebbed and flowed. The reason, says Steve Osburn, director in Kurt Salmon Associates’ supply chain practice, is that—for the majority of companies—when they consider going green, most want to know what amount of green, ...

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Autonomous Vehicles and Drones

Autonomous, or driverless, vehicles and drones have hit the main-stream of public consciousness. Hardly a week passes without with the national media breathlessly covering the technologies’ developments, including the good (Canadian officials using drones to map and determine the cause of a massive wildfire in May); the bad (a personal drone aircraft landing on the White House lawn last January ...

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Freight Transportation

Today’s transportation landscape has been infused with technological innovations that are both disruptive and ripe with possibilities. Driverless vehicles, 3D printing, cyber security advances, artificial intelligence and other developments will impact this industry in yet-to-be-seen ways. Ask those in the trenches now, however, and the current “trends” that come to mind are the everyday challenges: dealing with regulations, fuel prices ...

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Navigating the Politics of Analytics

In a prior issue of MHI Solutions and in the 2016 MHI Annual Industry Report—Accelerating Change: How Innovation is Driving Digital, Always-on Supply Chains, you may have noticed that one of the emerging technologies or innovations driving supply chain success is analytics. With talk of the future impact of analytics (namely predictive analytics) on the “digital, chain, always-on supply chain,” ...

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