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January 04, 2010
By: CartPro
Category: Future Trends, Material Handling, Trade Shows
The poor economy led to lower attendance at 2009 material handling shows but 2010 promises to be a better year. Companies trying to hold onto their bottom line may have skipped last year’s show or sent only a token delegate or two. With the manufacturing and peripheral industries finally starting to post small increases, material handling and related industries are anticipating better attendance at 2010 conferences.
Annual conferences and trade shows offer unique opportunities to see what’s new in the industry and what the future holds. Staying up-to-date with your industry enables you to better position yourself to meet future demands. National trade shows are an excellent place to network. They’re a good place to search for new talent to strengthen or rejuvenate your operation. They’re also an excellent place to form alliances with other company representatives that can lead to greater national exposure and increased product sales.
Continuing education classes and workshops provide information on innovative solutions to management and marketing problems. Round table discussions provide an opportunity to trade techniques and strategies with other industry professionals. Dealer and product give you an opportunity to learn about new products, increase your product knowledge, and discover products or services that can augment or revitalize your current product line.
The big national material handling conference/trade shows scheduled for 2010 include:
- NA 2010: Solutions that Make the Supply Chain Work sponsored by the Material Handling Industry of America (MHIA) will be held April 26-29 at the I-X Center in Cleveland, Ohio. The event will focus on positioning your business to take advantage of future trends. Click here for more information.
- 2010: The Rules Have Changed sponsored by the Material Handling Equipment Distributors Association (MHEDA) will be held May 1-5 at the Marriott Marco Island Resort & Spa on Marco Island, Florida. The conference will focus on providing insight into recession-driven maketing and economic trends. Click here for more information.
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December 30, 2009
By: CartPro
Category: Future Trends, Manufacturing Industry, Material Handling, Safety and Ergonomics, economy
2009 seemed like the year that would never end. For manufacturers, the bad news just kept on coming. But hope seems to have finally struggled above the horizon. From the depths of last winter’s discontent, 2009 has risen to end on a high note for material handling manufacturers and, indeed, most U.S. manufacturers. Reports indicate that U.S. manufacturing has finally turned the corner, and we can expect 2010 to be a far more productive and more profitable year. Break out the champagne!
The fourth quarter of 2009 saw strong manufacturing growth. With the job market showing signs of stabilization and housing prices beginning to climb toward normal, November brought a cautious increase in consumer spending. Manufacturing benefitted from increased orders for durable goods during the fourth quarter as customers started restocking their shelves. While durable goods orders in November were less than robust, they were twice the amount forecast by economists. Overall, the U.S. economic picture looks hopefully optimistic for the first time since the recession hit.
“We are seeing progress in a number of areas, from increases in consumer spending and business spending to growth in exports,” Brian Bethune, an economist at IHS Global Economics told the Associated Press last week. “It all adds up to a recovery that is gaining some momentum.”
Bethune and other economists are predicting a 4% annual rate of economic growth (as measured by gross domestic product) for the final quarter of 2009. In addition to durable goods, particularly a growing increase in high ticket items, industrial growth into the new year is expected to come from increased equipment and software purchases. Ergonomic material handling equipment sales are expected to increase as manufacturers and business owners seek out ways to increase worker productivity and decrease healthcare costs. Expected new regulatory requirements aimed at protecting worker health and safety are also expected to drive up sales of ergonomic carts and tugs.
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December 25, 2009
By: CartPro
Category: Automotive Industry, Material Handling, ergonomics
Ford is using Hollywood’s latest special effects gimmick to help design its cars and make them more ergonomic and driver friendly. You may have heard of motion-capture technology where a person’s body is hooked up to a slew of sensors that record individual muscle movements. It’s the revolutionary technology behind Hollywood director James Cameron’s sleek blue beings in the holiday movie hit Avatar. Ford Motor Co. has started using the same motion-capture technology to tweak the ergonomic design of its cars.
Since the early 1900s time-motion studies of ergonomics pioneers Frank and Lillian Gilbreth to movie-maker Cameron’s impressive high-tech sensors, industrial designers have been studying how workers move their bodies to accomplish different work tasks in an effort to create more efficient designs. Greater productivity may have been the early goal, but concern for worker health and safety has become an equally motivating challenge, one that gave birth to the field of ergonomics.
“Just like in the movies, we hook people up with sensors to understand exactly how they move when they are interacting with their vehicles,” Gary Strumolo, Ford manager of research and engineering, told Motor Trend magazine in a recent online article (click here to read the Motor Trend article and see pictures of the process). “Once we have all that motion captured, we create virtual humans that we can use to run thousands of tests that help us understand how people of all sizes and shapes interact with all kinds of vehicle designs. It’s an incredibly efficient way of engineering tomorrow’s vehicles.”
We may not have lithe blue aliens darting around our manufacturing plant, but DJ Products has long been a leader in the design and manufacture of ergonomic material handling carts and tugs. Long before James Cameron and Ford started sticking wired sensor pads on test subjects, DJ Products was investigating and studying how the body moved and applying it to material handling design. Nice to see the rest of the world starting to catch up!
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