Blog: Today's Optimized Facility

About the Blog:

Advancements in plant and manufacturing facilities offer managers an array of solutions for top performance. Optimizing facility operations requires keeping up with smart storage concepts, productive lift trucks, enhanced data collection, operator proficiency and best practices for material flow. It’s all about how to run better and manage smarter. This blog explores dynamic solutions and unique challenges facing today’s facilities managers.

UL Listed or UL Recognition: Understanding the marks on your lithium-ion battery

To satisfy growing customer expectations of increased product availability, faster response times and overall lowered delivery costs, warehouses and distribution centers are investing in advanced technologies to assist in addressing these needs. One of these technologies is lithium-ion batteries.

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Building up rather than out to maximize space utilization

With the demands of today's economy, plants are optimizing their existing space to help increase efficiency and operational profitability. Loads are becoming taller, and weights are getting heavier.

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Using big data to right-size and right-type your fleet

Knowing exactly how many lift trucks – or what kinds – to get for different areas of your operation is easier said than done. While one operator may be using a single sit/stand reach truck for the vast majority of the day, another may be switching from a walkie pallet truck to a rider pallet truck several times throughout the day.

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Product evolutions that are changing today’s supply chain

To stay competitive in today’s e-commerce environment, material handling manufacturers must address customer challenges in the supply chain and logistics industry with smart, leading-edge technology that can maximize performance and keep customers always on.

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Facility and fleet optimization for maximum efficiency and productivity

With changing material handling demands, automation has become a necessity for the industry. As labor pressures increase and as technology becomes more affordable and applicable, plant facilities are recognizing the added value that semi- and fully automated vehicles can offer to increase plant productivity.

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Virtual Reality: Engaging new generations and increasing operator proficiency

The manufacturing industry plays a key role in our nation’s current and future economic prosperity. However, the labor shortage and skills gap pose some serious challenges to today’s companies. Nearly 3½ million manufacturing jobs will need to be filled in the next decade, but the skills gap is expected to result in two million of those jobs going unfilled.

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Innovating for the future

New and improved technologies developed specifically for batch picking or multiorder picking help increase warehouse productivity, eliminate errors, and save money when it comes to total cost of ownership. The question, however, is which technologies will provide the biggest return on investment? And when is the right time to buy this equipment?

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Fleet replacement Part 3: It’s time to replace and upgrade your lift truck

Depending on the last time you replaced a lift truck, you may be pleasantly surprised to learn about all the new options offered today. These new product innovations are worth considering when you’re looking into replacing your fleet because they can save you time — and money.

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Fleet replacement, Part 2: Fact-finding tools to help determine when to retain, reallocate, replace, or remove your lift truck

It can be a daunting task to track and analyze individual truck and operator hour meters, use rates, and repair and maintenance fees. In addition, tracking these numbers can cost you and your workers a lot of time. Fortunately, it’s never been easier to enhance your fleet's productivity and profitability, as there are time-saving web-based tools that can do all the tracking, analyzing, and reporting for you.

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Fleet replacement Part 1: Does my lift truck need to go?

Increased reliability and decreased maintenance costs — it’s easy to see the benefits of purchasing a new lift truck to replace one that has run its course. Even better are the benefits of planning ahead with a fleet replacement strategy. Having a strategy will help warehouse managers avoid unexpected downtime from the frequent and costly repairs often needed on older trucks.

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How can you improve your operation? Ask your employees.

Ten years ago, Raymond embarked on a journey to implement the Toyota Production System on its manufacturing floor. One major initiative from this endeavor was the introduction of the kaizen program. Kaizen is the practice of continuous improvement. If an employee believes there is a better way to perform a particular process or task in his or her usual work, the employee can submit the improved process idea as a kaizen.

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Put People First With Telematics

Certain day-to-day goals of warehouse operations managers have remained constant for years – namely, reducing total costs while creating value in the operation. In the past, operations managers measured value by how quickly goods could be moved from one point to another. Although that is still important, operations managers today are finding that more information is needed to see the bigger picture.

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