Why is Material Handling Equipment important to your on-site Operations?

Have you ever wondered how windmills, load bearing tankers, cars, or airplanes are made so perfectly? Or how are the huge, tall, multi storeyed buildings constructed, when all they consist of is heavy steel? Have you seen large laid cranes on top of newly constructed tall buildings? The answer to all of this is “material handling”. Sounds extremely simple, but this industrial process is really tough and complex. 

Roughly speaking, material handling is the movement of goods/components from their native site to the point of use in whatever operation required e.g. manufacturing. And the equipment used for handling are called as material handling equipments.

In today’s blog, we are going to understand what exactly a ‘material handling equipment’ is and in what ways it is important for your business.

What is The Material Handling Equipment?

Material Handling equipment is machinery that allows your employees to transport, move and lift heavy goods. Among them, there are, in particular, pallet trucks, industrial trucks, handling trucks, cranes, hoists, or lifting tables. All these equipment allow your employees to work in a better way and physically protect themselves. 

Indeed, the workers will have to make much less effort towards transporting and lifting the heavy goods. 

In material handling, the equipment are divided into two categories – automatic and manual. Let’s learn what they are all about. 

#1 Automatic Material Handling Equipment

Automated material handling involves the use of robots and computerized devices to move, lift, pull, push, store and retrieve goods. This type of material handling might involve various multiple devices or single mechanical equipment such as EOT Cranes, stores, stackers, electrical hoists, totes, trolleys, etc.

#2 Manual Material Handling Equipment

Manual material handling uses physical force to lift, move, store and retrieve goods. Usually, businesses have to depend upon animal or human laborers for manual handling of goods. Some activities that are associated with manual handling are – restraining, holding, carrying, pulling, pushing, lowering, and lifting. 

Now the question that comes into play is that – is material handling as important as many people believe? Yes, it is! Keep reading to learn in what terms material handling is crucial for your business. 

Why is Material Handling Equipment Essential?

Just like any other industrial process, the material handling process requires pre-determined goals or objectives. Having a set of objectives allows businesses to use the system to its highest efficiency. Here are some of the key objectives of using material handling equipment that you should know about.

Cost Reduction

The major objective of a material handling system is to reduce the cost of handling the loads. Handling the goods means lifting, moving, pushing, or pulling them. The indirect or direct cost reduction generally comes in various forms, including –

• Decrease in the labor of material handling
• Optimizing the labor of material handling depending upon the level of skill set.
• Reduction in indirect labor for activities like inspection, traffic control, wrapping, and shipping.
• Decreasing the waste like packaging materials and various protective devices such as containers and racks through optimization.
• Reducing the chances of any potential damages to the goods.
• Optimizing the control requirements of a load

Material handling is highly efficient at reducing the overall cost of production by improving raw material flow. 

Enhanced Capacity

Material handling systems help businesses increase their capacity by improving space utilization through an efficient storage layout. For example, with high-altitude cranes and specially designed containers, businesses can utilize unused spaces.

In addition, material handling also improves your production process by reducing travel time. Optimizing the path of load flow and the timing of your material movement allows businesses to boost their overall capacity. This further leads to better utilization of the labor.

Improves Productivity And Efficiency

A very unpopular objective of material handling is the improvement of overall business efficiency and productivity. Using automated industrial rigging or lifting equipment will help you reduce the transportation, unloading, and loading time for raw finished goods and materials. Since the raw materials sit in the storage or on the docks for less duration, there’s no need for any additional storage.

Further, the material handling system improves the supply of raw material, helping you operate your labor and equipment to their top capacity. In addition, businesses can also optimize the number of supervision and loading crew. This will result in the enhancement of your overall efficiency and productivity while maintaining the labor costs.

Improved Working Conditions

Handling heavy goods manually can become really frustrating, risky, and time consuming. In addition, you might need to depend upon a healthy and young workforce to transport heavy loads, resulting in increased employee turnovers. All these factors will affect the morale of employees as their overall working conditions might appear too harsh to them. 

However, with automated material handling equipment, you can handle any type of material comfortably. This will improve your employees’ morale and their rate of output, resulting in increased productivity. This proved that material handling machinery is effective in improving the working conditions of your business significantly.

Increase Safety

Handling and lifting materials manually are highly risky. According to ILO (Indian Labor Organization), around 2.78 million workers lose their lives due to work-related diseases and accidents every year. In addition, more than 374 million workers suffer from non-lethal injuries at their workplaces every year.

Accidents lead to recoverable damages to labor and loads and expensive downtime. However, all this can be eliminated with a material handling system or equipment. With such machinery, you can make your workplace safe for your workers. This will significantly reduce the risk of damages and accidents to both labor and goods.

Improved Customer Service

With a material handling system, businesses can achieve better speed, higher efficiency, timely supply, and reduced production cost. When these factors are improved, customer satisfaction becomes significantly better, especially in the B2B industry. If you are struggling with unsatisfying customer support, introducing material handling equipment can help you a lot. 

Reduced delivery and shipping times gives businesses more happy customers while achieving customer loyalty. Material handling machinery ensures quick delivery time and a fast production rate, which facilitates fast order fulfillment. When your business ensures that the customers receive the undammed shipment on time, your customers will not only stick to your brand but will also refer to others.

Final Words

With material handling equipment, entrepreneurs can improve their business significantly. Introduce them to your business, and you’ll notice appreciable growth in a shorter duration of time. When it comes to material handling equipment, Indef is India’s No. 1 Hoist and Crane manufacturing company. 

We are the market leaders in Hoisting solutions and most trusted brand by our customers. We have been providing these machineries (automated equipment) for last six decades. The best part is – that our equipment is highly efficient and robust. Therefore, you don’t have to worry about their damage for quite a good amount of time. For more details about us, visit indef.com now! 

Seeking for a customized product in the market as per requirements is a challenging task. We are pioneers in customized solution offering based on customer requirements. 

If you have any queries to ask about material handling equipment, leave your question in the comment section below. We’ll try to catch up with you there.