A modular future
By Staff -- Modern Materials Handling, 12/1/1999
Director and co-founder of The Progress Group, Jim Apple, Jr. includes among his credentials the Reed-Apple Award, highest honor in the materials handling profession. He grew up with the industry; his father's career in the profession began in 1938. And recently he's added experience in Europe to his materials handling portfolio.Apple thus has seen the industry evolve. But he believes some basic changes still will be necessary in the new millennium. More modularity is one area where he expects advances, especially in a world economy.
"Our lack of modularity in the U.S. in containers and packages really gives us fits," he suggests, particularly in automated handling and palletizing. Among needed changes is an overpack container. It will be "something between a pallet and a sea container, to handle LTL shipments with greater speed and efficiency. The air cargo container is one such device."
Breakthroughs to greater productivity "will only come with basic changes to modular packaging designs along these lines," Apple maintains.
Modularity also is a vital issue facing materials handling equipment and systems suppliers, Apple says. They need to develop more modular products-from both the mechanical and controls perspectives.
"Today we can't put together very complex systems, nor systems that will achieve high throughputs, with off-the-shelf equipment." With the rapid pace of business expected in the new millennium, greater modularity would help speed the process from planning to system startup.
With time pressures ever shorter for that process, there will be demand for faster, better analytical tools to test business scenarios and handling systems as well. Apple expects software developers will provide "more user friendly methods to evaluate and massage data and examine different handling concepts before we commit to hardware and software."
Apple's younger son, Andy, is now in the family profession. Jim hopes it won't be too many years before both he and Andy see these basic changes and developments occur.
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