Different types of material handling equipment

Different Types of Material Handling Equipment In any warehouse operation, material handling equipment is needed. Material handling equipment is the one that is used in moving, storing, and protecting materials and goods during the entire warehouse operation process. It covers a wide range of tools, storage units, vehicles, and accessories, but are classified into four categories namely storage, industrial trucks, engineered systems and bulk material handling.

1. Storage and handling equipment Storage equipment is the one that is being used to hold materials and products during the times when they are not yet ready for transportation. Most of the storage handling equipment include pallets, racks, drawers, bins or shelves where materials can be stacked in an orderly and organized manner while they are waiting to be transported.

These storage equipment are what’s going to protect the materials even if there is a buildup of stocks. The periods by which the materials are stored can be short-term or long-term but the storage equipment is capable of handling them until such time that transportation has to take place.

When you have a suitable and proper storage equipment, it can increase your warehouse’s production efficiency. It will help make the entire operation easy with each stage. If there is any inefficient stage, it will create a rippling effect on the other stages of the operations down the road.

In a production environment, it is also important that you utilize space efficiently so that you will be able to store as many items as you need. When this happens, your workflow operations will not have to be interrupted because you won’t have to think about restocking. This ultimately helps your efficiency, as well as the general productivity in your warehouse operations.

Storage and handling equipment have six types and these are the drive through or drive in racks, the push back racks, the pallet racks, the sliding racks, shelving, and stacking frames.

2. Industrial trucks Industrial trucks can refer to a wide range of equipment but they all primarily do one thing and that is to provide transportation. Industrial trucks can be small devices or large

scale motorized vehicles. There are some that can be manually driven, while others just make the materials mobile. These trucks are most of the time useful when there is a need to insert under pallets or other types of storage platforms. Many types of these trucks also have the capability to lift either by manually operating them or by using power. They can be automated or they can be steered manually by an operator. The ones that are used to stack items are called stacking trucks, while the non-stacking trucks are being used for transportation and not for loading products.

Industrial trucks are also broken down into six types and these are the automated guided vehicles or the AGVs, the order pickers, the side loaders, the hand, platform and pallet trucks, the pallet jacks, and the walking stackers.

3. Engineered systems An engineered system is something that is usually automated and is typically assembled from many different units. One good example of an engineered system is the AS/RS or Automated Storage and Retrieval System. This is an automated device that is already complete because it has shelves, aisles, and racks in it. This can be used to manually select items by the operator or it can be used automatically. There are three categories under an engineered system, and these are the automated guided vehicles, robotic delivery systems and conveyor systems.

4. Bulk material handling Bulk handling equipment is the equipment used for storing, controlling and transporting materials in bulk or volume. This type of equipment in handling a wide array of materials and products such as beverage, food, metal items, minerals, and many others.

Generally, these equipment are handling the materials only when they are loose. They are capable of moving some items from one stage of the production process to another so that these items will easily be manipulated and packaged. They are primarily designed to move large quantities of materials with the help of drums and hoppers. The

types of bulk handling material equipment are bucket and grain elevators, hoppers and silos, conveyor belts, reclaimers and stackers.