Factories and industries always require equipment that helps them move products and other equipment from one place to another. This type of equipment is vital to manufacturing and movement processes because it provides safety and makes the job easier and faster. Let’s discuss this type of equipment and its categories.
Material Handling Equipment: What It Is
So, what is material handling equipment? It’s any tool, machine, or appliance to lift, move, transport, store, package, and manage materials. Such equipment means the workforce doesn’t manually carry materials from one spot to another, even if they work in one large space.
The equipment is usually motorized or mechanized to make its operation seamless. While it costs to invest in it initially, the long-term benefits more than make up for the upfront costs. Using material handling machines reduce the need for manual labor. Doing this, in turn, saves money and time, driving efficiency in all departments.
Key Categories
There are four main categories under material handling equipment, and each makes it easy to identify which tool or machine fits most in it. They are storage and handling, engineered systems, bulk material, and industrial machines.
- Storage and Handling Equipment
This category is the most basic use to which you can put material handling equipment. In fact, most factories and industries use it for this reason. It works to store materials and other tools or machines that are part of the company’s inventory for future usage. In other words, it moves heavy-duty items into storage.
It also moves items meant for production from one stage of the process to another. Using it makes the process faster, easier, and more accurate. Several machines fall under this category. Examples include storage containers, which hold large materials and items meant for production and come in various sizes, and pallets, which hold goods that are already packaged and ready for transport.
Other types are mezzanines, which are sub-layers in a factory or warehouse to increase available storage and workspace, and storage racks for easy loading and unloading of pallets using forklifts.
- Engineered Systems
This type of handling equipment is mechanized or automated, which means they are motorized. It cuts the need for manual labor by a significant percentage and increases efficiency in any workspace. Such machines are predominantly used in warehouses and manufacturing factories. The best part is that most of these machines don’t need someone to drive them; they are completely self-guided, hence automated.
Many machines fall under this category, and they include palletizers, automated guided vehicles, sortation systems, and automated storage and retrieval systems. A palletizer, as the name may suggest, does the work of loading pallets. It automatically loads materials onto a pallet and sends it over to a conveyor, which takes it to the next stage of the manufacturing process.
An automated guided vehicle (AGV) operates itself, following a predetermined route across the factory or warehouse floor, to arrive at the programmed destination. A sortation system is designed to read and detect the destination of an object placed on it, sorting it from the others and delivering it correctly.
It does all these automatically. An automated storage and retrieval system (AS/RS) can be called a robot that stores and retrieves materials from specific locations. Click here to learn about the types of AS/RS systems.
- Bulk Material Handling Equipment
The name already says what this type of equipment does. It moves, stores, and processes large quantities or bulk materials. The materials can be anything, small or big, but the equipment handles them in bulk. Note that it may be movable or stationary.
For example, a storage silo or barn is a bulk handling tool in this regard. In the same vein, a conveyor belt that moves items in a warehouse or manufacturing facility is a bulk handling machine.
Several machines fall under this category, and they include grain elevators, hoppers, conveyors, and dump trucks. A grain elevator, which can also be called a bucket elevator, moves flow able items vertically. It’s of the best use in a commercial farm or factory that processes grains and other flow-able materials.
A hopper is a bin with which grains can be moved from one place to another and unloaded through a latch at the bottom. A conveyor, as explained, moves items in a line in bulk, much like what you see at the airport or in an assembly line. A dump truck transports and unloads large quantities of materials from site to another.
4. Industrial Machines
An industrial machine carries materials from one point to another. Despite the name, the machine can be motorized or manual. Hand trucks fall under this category; the same is true of forklifts. A forklift can move heavy-duty items as someone drives and controls its actions.
Some carry weights as much as 4,000 pounds and can lift up to ten feet in the air. Follow this resource: https://www.iqsdirectory.com/ to find out more information about the types of forklifts.
Other examples include a walkie stacker, which is a motorized machine that lifts loads but no one drives it because someone uses a remote control to direct it, and a side loader, which looks and operates like a forklift but has forks at the sides to load items as it moves in narrow aisles.
Conclusion
Material handling equipment makes manufacturing, loading, unloading, transporting, and the general production process easy and quick. Gone are the days when workers had to manually move items; now, they can control machines to do much more in hours than they could do in weeks.
Moreover, each manufacturing process has designated tools to avoid confusion. The best part is that they cut costs and improve efficiency, and you can rent the machines if you don’t want to invest in them yet.
