Material handling
[1] It uses a wide range of manual, semi-automated, and automated equipment and includes consideration of the protection, storage, and control of materials throughout their manufacturing, warehousing, distribution, consumption, and disposal.
Almost every item of physical commerce has been transported on a conveyor or lift truck or another type of material handling equipment in manufacturing plants, warehouses, and retail stores.
Disadvantages of unit loads include the negative impact of batching on production system performance, and the cost of returning empty containers/pallets to their point of origin.
[9] Manual material handling work contributes to a large percentage of the over half a million cases of musculoskeletal disorders reported annually in the United States.
But very often productivity gets an additional and solid shot in the arm when managers and workers take a fresh look at how best to use energy, equipment, and exertion to get the job done in the most efficient, effective, and effortless way possible.
[10][11] Manual handling refers to the use of a worker’s hands to move individual containers by lifting, lowering, filling, emptying, or carrying them.
It can expose workers to physical dangers that can lead to injuries: a large percentage of the over half a million cases of musculoskeletal disorders reported in the U.S. each year arise from manual handling, and often involve strains and sprains to a person's lower back, shoulders and upper limbs.
These improvements can include reconfiguring the task and using positioning equipment like lift/tilt/turn tables, hoists, balancers, and manipulators to reduce reaching and bending.
Most existing material handling equipment is only semi-automated because a human operator is needed for tasks like loading/unloading and driving that are difficult and/or too costly to fully automate.
However, ongoing advances in sensing, machine intelligence, and robotics have made it possible to fully automate an increasing number of handling tasks.
[15] A rough guide to determine how much can be spent for automated equipment that would replace one material handler is to consider that, with benefits, the median moving machine operator costs a company $45,432 per year.
