DJ Products, Inc.

NA 2008 recently wrapped up in Cleveland. One of the more interesting developments to come out of the annual trade show sponsored by the Material Handling Industry of America (MHIA) was increased industry interest in worker assist devices. “We’re finding a renewed interest in looking at the worker rather than just the workplace,” said MHIA Vice President Tom Carbott. “Companies that can find talent want to keep their employees safe and productive in the workplace.” Carbott said he expects more exhibitors to mirror this interest at next year’s show in Chicago.

In a related development, in response to industry concerns about attracting workers to careers in material handling, the first job posting website dedicated solely to recruiting students to the material handling industry was introduced. Designed and launched as a cooperative effort by the Material Handling Equipment Distributors Association (MHEDA), MHIA and the College-Industry Council on Material Handling Education the website is meant to serve as a bridge or gateway between students and industry professionals. Dubbed by MHEDA the Gateway Program, the website is located at www.mheda.org.

“The website was developed to attract and recruit students seeking employment in the industry, as well as to strengthen relationships between academia and industry,” explained MHEDA Executive Vice President Liz Richards. “We encourage all professionals in the industry to take full advantage of the resources on the Gateway site, as it is meant for industry-wide use.”

The site targets three groups: students, advisors and industry professionals, providing customized resources and publications of specific interest to each group. Free searchable databases allow users to review resumes and job postings. The site can be used by students and industry professionals to find/fill internships, co-op work opportunities and full-time employment. Employers can also indicate their availability for guest lectures and site visits.

Our last two posts (April 18 & 21) have talked about a vision of the future in which a smaller number of highly-trained and skilled, self-directed workers fuse automation and manual operations to accomplish material handling functions with maximum efficiency. While some aspects of this utopian vision will require years of careful planning and development, part of this dream is already within the grasp of business owners.

Smart carts are already available today that can significantly increase the effectiveness and efficiency of a single worker.  Highly maneuverable electric, motorized and batter-powered carts allow a worker to effortlessly transport and manipulate equipment and goods, even in confined spaces.  Ergonomic design ensures the workers can accomplish tasks with an economy of motion, minimum physical force and maximum safety. “Walk-behind” construction allows maximum operator control, even in tight, difficult spaces. Electric cart movers provide operating flexibility that allows more versatile use than standard material handling equipment such as forklifts.

CartCaddy material handling carts, tugs and pushers come in a variety of shapes, sizes and configurations geared to handle any wheeled material handling application, including:

• Electric cart pullers are designed to pull carts with two swivel casters. The 5th-wheel style of these carts allows them to turn with the load. Loads of 3,000 up to 50,000 pounds can be handled with ease.
• Electric tuggers that can accommodate 4-swivel casters or wagon wheel type turning enable the operator to also control the back end of the cart.
• Specialized electric pushers can push carts in a straight line, down a rail or down an assembly line. Among the applications available are car pushers designed to push cars, buses and heavy equipment down an assembly line and paper roll pushers developed to push rolls, materials or large wheels that move in a straight line or roll on their own surface. Trailer movers can move wheeled equipment such as trailers, boats and RVs, anything with a ball coupler or pintle-hitch tongue.

The future of the material handling industry is at a crossroads in America. A declining workforce, decreased interest in blue collar jobs and negative perceptions about pay and job satisfaction threaten the future of material handling. The short-term solution for survival is to hire an increasingly immigrant workforce, mount a PR campaign to revamp our image, and automate to minimize manpower strain, says Benoit Montreuil of the College Industry Council on Material Handling Education (see our April 18 post). “I believe that each of these three solutions has merits in specific settings,” said Montreuil, “but that it will be insufficient for addressing the scale and scope of the emerging crisis.”

If we are to survive as an industry, material handling must change its basic paradigm, warns Montreuil. He believes that by automating many of the steps in warehousing and logistics, we have stripped workers of the opportunity to think, make decisions and have input into their jobs, the very things that provide job satisfaction. When workers are merely required to follow a pre-determined pattern, as in pick-to-light solutions, they become little better than robots, says Montreuil. By removing the challenge from the job, he believes, we are losing our most important resource — the intelligent, innovative worker.

The alternative paradigm that Montreuil envisions is a material handling industry that relies on highly-skilled, certified logistics professionals operating in self-sufficient teams in distribution centers, factories and logistics applications around the world. These professionals would be “trained to exploit all the physical handling and transport technologies,” says Montreuil, combining automation with manual operations to achieve maximum efficiency. In his utopia, Montreuil sees a material handling industry that offers “career paths for their talented workforce.”