General Material Handling Facilities Manufacturing Plant Of Hot Water Heaters

Benefits and ROI Analysis *

A company manufacturing hot water heaters was engaged in a continuing program of cost reduction for material handling operation. Many of the proposals under the program involved changing some portion of the material handling equipment and procedures. The present system utilized lift trucks to move sheet steel through receiving, storage and various

manufacturing plant operational locations. The heaters were than moved onto conveyor system for glass coating, welding and assembly. Finished, crated heaters also were handled by lift trucks. In addition the transporting of in-process material from production machines to storage and back was done by lift trucks. Finally, lift trucks assisted in moving and installing heavy dies for the production machines.

Management decided to collect information on precisely what material handling services were required in the plant. To obtain this type of information they started by simply observing what was being done by the present system and used the industrial engineering tool or work sampling. The material handling operations of both the lift trucks and the operators were studied. After 1,427 observations of the six lift trucks the following percentages of time in various activities were found: Category Percentage of Time Lift truck moving with load 13.4 Lift truck moving without load 15.7 Adjusting stacked material 3.1 Lift truck moving with die 0.4 Assisting in installing / removing die 0.9 Lift truck not in use, work not available 46.1 Lift truck not in use, operator absent 9.4 Lift truck not in use, maintenance, inspection, etc. 6.3 Lift truck not in area being studies 4.7 ———- 100.00 Further results showed that in only 0.2 percent of the rounds of observation were all lift truck in use. In only 1.3 percent of the rounds were as many as four trucks in use at the same time. As a result of the information obtained management was able to take action to reduce the cost of material handling substantially by reduction of lift trucks from six to four. Evaluating Lift tTruck Utilization From the above example the lift truck utilization is only a part of the overall material handling efficiency of the system in place. It’s efficiency does not depend on the lift truck operator alone, but on the other elements of the material handling system as a whole.

It is a well known fact that most of the material handling operations do not have any engineered standard in order to measure lift truck operational utilization. It’s also well known fact that the task to arrive at such a standard is not an easy one. It requires “time study” and even when standards are in place, it’s difficult to measure vehicle utilization against the standard. The flow of material might change, which means a new standard must be incorporated and such systems require input from the lift truck operator by handwritten reports or utilizing some other online communication system to report on the work in progress. Review for management… Across multiple industries data collected reveals a very similar pattern of lift truck operation of material handling operations without any vehicle utilization control: Typical Shift Pay 8 hours Operator Logged in to Lift truck 4 hours Lift Truck in Motion 2hours Lift Truck Moving with a Load 1 hour One hour of product moved for every 8 hours paid! The above data has been collected from over 20.000 VMS lift truck installations. ( Source I.D. Systems, Inc.) Of course, some operators are higher and some are lower, but VMS provides visibility and productivity metrics that are not achievable in any other way. If you can use any VMS to achieve 2 hours of “ Vehicle motion with a load time”, that represents a100% increase in your vehicle productivity.

The object of material handling is to move materials The most important factor to increase vehicle utilization is the real-time measurement of vehicle driving time loaded and unloaded, lift time, lifted load above pre-set threshold as of the percentage of the working time utilization factor. The degree of utilization considered to be “optimum” will depend upon the type of material handling operation. As of example, the percentage should be as high as possible for continuous lift truck “haulage” work. Solution Providing that the work load is there and all other elements within the total material handling system are in place are working well, there is no reason why vehicle utilization can not be increased substantially. With a constant measurements of the vehicle utilization on every lift truck, everyday in real-time you will achieve a constant increase in percentages of vehicle operational hours utilized. ED2-400 SkidWeigh Series

Onboard check weighing scale Utilization factor input Under utilization visual warning to lift truck operator Web based reports, optional External under utilization visual / audio warning, optional Universal application for all kinds of lift trucks Operating voltage from 12 to 55 V DC Compact size No operator input required Optional events input

Integrated Visual Data Technology Inc. www.skidweigh.com