Tag Archives: MHI Solutions

By Jennifer Pazour, Associate Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Agility, the ability to move quickly and easily, is a powerful, and some may say necessary, skill for success in today’s supply chains. This need for agile decision-making is changing how organizations acquire warehousing and distribution capabilities. An emerging, more flexible option is on-demand warehousing, which enables ...

By Sandy Smith One of the first casualties of the COVID-19 pandemic was in-person shopping. With mandatory shutdowns of non-essential retail and customers fearful about being in public, necessities moved to e-commerce. As the pandemic lingered, it shifted habits in ways that aren’t necessarily changing back. “People are saying, ‘When are we going to get back to normal?’ That’s like ...

By Michael Mikitka Amidst the backdrop of COVID-19 and the political uncertainty of 2020, widespread protests drew attention to our country’s racial and cultural inequities. For many business leaders, 2020 was a year of reckoning. Not only about surviving the challenges of a global pandemic and its impact on their supply chains and customers, but also about improving employee diversity, ...

By Christian Dow For high-end grocery chains seeking to provide a premium customer experience, it’s always a bad thing when customers are outnumbered in the aisles by fast-moving order pickers who often outcompete them for the same product inventory. Whether those order pickers are representing third parties such as Instacart or Shipt or are store employees hired during the pandemic ...

By Jason Schenker Despite major challenges at the start of the year, 2021 is poised to build economic momentum in the months and quarters ahead. This is true for manufacturing and material handling, but service industries are also poised to gain ground and experience significant year-on-year growth in the months ahead as vaccinations reach scale domestically and abroad. On the ...

At their essence, electrification and machine controlling devices are about safety in industrial handling. Solutions in the field serve to make the workplace safer in every major manufacturing and distribution sector. Today, the central safety question the field faces is how to properly introduce increasingly sophisticated technological tools and to ensure they are aligned with each other in the operation ...

Across the country, third-party logistics companies are on the lookout for innovative storage and retrieval systems. Whether it’s for use in a cold storage facility or ambient application, there are a number of solutions offered to meet the handling demands of manufacturers, distribution centers and others along the supply and demand chain. There is even an MHI Industry Group that ...

How can companies ensure that an overhead hoist is designed for optimum performance? It starts with determining the right Hoist Duty Service Classification based on the hoist’s ability to operate properly under varying loading conditions and operating cycles, said Bob Burkey, senior engineering advisor at MHI member Columbus Mckinnon Corp. and a member of the Hoist Manufacturers Institute (HMI). “By ...

Devan Dunneback doesn’t have a pet of his own, but he plays an important role in feeding millions of dogs and cats each day. As assistant logistics manager for Nestlé Purina North America, he’s responsible for the truckloads of pet food that leave the company’s manufacturing plant in Clinton, IA, and arrive at retail locations and distribution centers across the ...

The people who work at MHI—and its new division, Warehousing Education and Research Council (WERC)—are the gears that keep the association rolling. They ensure MHI continues to be a valuable association and resource for people involved in the industry, and do so with wit, competence and a smile on their face. The goal of this column in MHI Solutions magazine ...