Tag Archives: MHI Solutions

By Nicole Nelson Scott Shaw recalls a time in the not too distant past when he attempted to help a food manufacturer calculate an optimal scheduling scenario to grind grain. As the Clarkston Consulting senior consultant was well aware, the utilization of big hammer mills was extremely energy intensive, yet inevitable, as said grain served as the necessary basis—mixed with ...

By Sara Pearson Specter Today’s robotic solutions—both fixed and autonomous mobile robots—are increasingly being built as a platform upon which application-specific solutions can be built to handle unique manufacturing and warehousing tasks. But, in today’s highly dynamic, ever changing world, needs and strategies may likewise shift. Fortunately, due to their inherent flexibility and versatility, robots can be adapted to accommodate ...

By Nick Fortuna Modern supply chains are too complicated for any one company to do everything well, so strategic partnerships are key to solving the big problems facing the material handling industry and its customers. The right partnerships make business relationships more transparent, resilient and sustainable because customers get to work with best-of-breed providers working in their individual areas of ...

In these unprecedented times, supply chain solutions are more critical to business success than they have ever been. To answer this call, MHI created the ProMat Digital Experience (ProMatDX), a new digital event experience designed to power up manufacturing and supply chain professionals with critical access to the latest solutions they need now to improve the resiliency and agility of ...

By Maria Leggett COVID-19 forced everyone to experience what a rapid pivot required. The crisis gave visibility to the discrepancies between current and future skill sets of employees and the momentous task ahead preparing for the future of work. According to a recent McKinsey report, pre-COVID, 59% of company leaders prioritized building skill proficiencies. Post-COVID, that number changed to 78% ...

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 ...