Solutions Spotlight

At warehouses and distribution centers, the migration toward automation is taking on greater urgency in 2022, and late adopters are realizing they can’t afford to sit on the sidelines any longer.

Product Spotlight— Until SLAM got underway at the beginning of 2022, no MHI industry group specifically sought to optimize what practitioners sometimes call the “last 100 feet” in warehousing, distribution and fulfillment applications. SLAM—an acronym for Scan, Label, Apply and Manifest—now targets expertise regarding this critical supply chain component. It’s important because as e-commerce distribution systems increase in importance, especially ...

As high labor turnover continues to create an array of stiff challenges, the importance of devoting resources to safety in the field of overhead lifting cranes and hoists has never been more in focus. MHI’s Overhead Alliance, which includes the Crane Manufacturers Association of America (CMAA), the Hoist Manufacturers Institute (HMI) and the Monorail Manufacturers Association (MMA), is leading the way in providing safety education and resources.

Product Spotlight BY MICHAEL SENECAL The key to understanding sustainability in any industry is understanding the direct relationship between efficiency and the environment—improvements in one also mean improvements in the other. As enterprises with material handling needs strive to become more productive and efficient, they turn to members of MHI’s Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems (ASRS) Industry Group for tools ...

Safer Handling BY TOM GRESHAM Operators of factories and warehouses increasingly are seeking to integrate industrial lift devices with other components of their spaces. No longer do lifts operate in relative isolation. In that way, lifts are “a piece of the overall machine now,” said James Johnston, director of engineering at MHI member Autoquip and chair of Lift Manufacturers Product ...

Continued outreach and education on the topics of worker safety during overhead lifting are the focus of the Alliance between the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the Crane, Hoist and Monorail (CHM) members.

If supply chains are what make the world work, then electrification and control devices are what make supply chains function.

BY TOM GRESHAM Link to digital version of article in MHI Solutions. Twenty years ago, ergonomics “was kind of a nice thing to do,” said Jim Galante, chair of MHI’s Ergonomic Assist Systems & Equipment (EASE) Industry Group, but it was not an area that attracted close attention in material handling. In the decades since then, however, he said an ...

By Christian Dow The wall separating the front of a retail store from the back of the building is the line of scrimmage, and due to the pandemic, the back of the store is marching downfield with momentum while the front of the store gives up ground. That’s the message from supply chain experts who are helping retailers adjust to ...

Speed is the name of the game these days in conveyor and sortation systems. As the pressure to ship material faster grows with the rise of e-commerce and building customer expectations for rapid delivery, the systems that move and sort orders are accelerating. With that speed comes more potential for risks. “Sortation equipment was sorting 50 feet per minute a ...