Plant Services: Today's Optimized Facility
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.
-
5 min read12.02.2016
Surviving the holiday rush: 6 tips to prevent disruptions
The holidays are always an exciting time of the year, but they can also be highly stressful for unprepared businesses. According to the National Retail Federation, as much as 40% of annual retail sales come during the holiday season, and the NRF predicts that retail sales for 2016 will grow over last year's – meaning that this year’s holidays will likely be even more demanding than last year.
-
5 min read11.01.2016
Manufacturing Day shows that the future of manufacturing is bright
Every year in October, many companies celebrate National Manufacturing Day! This industry holiday provides the opportunity for companies and organizations to inspire and educate the next generation of manufacturers. In order to do this, companies hold events showcasing their teams and the processes they use every day.
-
4 min read08.11.2016
5 Things you can learn from your operators
Amid the daily shuffle, many employers may forget to use one of their most valuable resources: employees. It’s important to realize that the people who work around you have insights and opinions that may solve some of your problems. And in the warehouse, your material handling operators want to offer that support by sharing what they think.
-
4 min read07.01.2016
National Forklift Safety Day: A launch pad for a year-round focus on training
June 14 marked National Forklift Safety Day, drawing attention to the importance of training programs and their necessity for successful operations. The most successful operations keep the attention on training year-round. Robust operator training can go beyond National Forklift Safety Day, improving operational efficiency and profitability in manufacturing plants and warehouses.
-
4 min read05.27.2016
5 ways to optimize operations
Dunn & Bradstreet reports that more than half of all Fortune 500 companies experience at least 1.6 hours of downtime each week, costing each company approximately $46 million in lost productivity annually. The costly implications of downtime underscore the importance of ensuring that operations run as efficiently as possible.
-
4 min read03.10.2016
How Proactive is Your Supply Chain?
If your goal is optimizing lead times, quality, cost and delivery, a proactive supply chain is mandatory. With this approach to supply chain management, you’re better able to find opportunities to remove and shorten steps, as well as identify needs earlier, ultimately leading to more predictable results and increased margins.
-
4 min read10.22.2015
Manufacturing Day: A look at the past, toward the future
Earlier this month, we celebrated National Manufacturing Day.
Manufacturing has been an important part of our country’s economy for nearly three centuries. Now, although the work is still demanding, technology has shifted the way manufacturing companies operate. -
3 min read07.30.2015
Single-source parts programs: Too good to be true?
As a facility manager, you are responsible for maintaining a large building buzzing with activity, which may include refrigeration, conveyor applications, automation, and even a fleet of material handling equipment (MHE). MHE can get backed up for a variety of reasons, and when it does, the operations manager soon will ask when you expect the equipment to be back to production.
-
5 min read05.21.2015
Pick a winner: Focus your people by focusing on the right equipment
If you ask anyone outside the material handling industry to describe a lift truck, he or she will probably describe a classic counterbalanced lift truck: four wheels, a massive body behind a mast and forks, and a seat like a lawn tractor.