The global picture

By GARY FORGER , EXECUTIVE EDITOR -- Modern Materials Handling, 6/1/2000

With apologies to Jules Verne and his epic Around the World in 80 Days , this issue of Modern Materials Handling could be subtitled Around the World in 118 pages and a Web site. You see, this past spring was quite incredible for the world of materials handling.

First, there was the CeMat materials handling show in Hannover, Germany. Nearly 1,000 exhibitors filled eight halls for a week with their latest materials handling equipment, systems, and software innovations. As you can well imagine, just walking the show is a major undertaking. But it was clearly worth it.

The story - The Buzz from Hannover - covers some of the many highlights. The new lift truck designs were particularly striking and bring much more than just a new look to that materials handling workhorse. Other developments ranged from hoists and monorails to storage equipment, e-commerce sortation, and information systems.

By the way, CeMat runs concurrently with five other shows at the Hannover Fairgrounds. Total attendance for the week was 270,000.

While in Europe, we were able to pick up two great success stories for this issue. One is at Interforum, France's second largest book distributor. The company is using an automated storage system that is known across Europe but unavailable until recently in the U.S. This story marks its introduction here.

We also cover telecommunications supplier Tele Danmark. Our first-ever, non-U.S. Warehouse of the Month explains how Denmark's telecommunications company consolidated 60 plus warehouses into three distribution centers and slashed handling costs by 65%. It's pretty impressive.

With all of that under our belt, we were off to Detroit and NA 2000, the North American Material Handling Show and Forum. Also an international show, this event featured over 400 materials handling leaders, few of whom were in the halls at Hannover. This month's News & Trends section covers the headlines from that show. And the first half of our coverage of innovations appears in Product Focus .

Now most people might think two European warehouse stories and visits to more than 1,400 show booths (ok, we might not have hit every one) in less than a month would be enough for one magazine issue. But we didn't stop there. We wanted to go completely global with the help of the Web.

You may have noticed a third contents page this month devoted to our Web offerings. If not, flip back a couple of pages and check it out. You'll see what's available exclusively on our two sites, mmh.com and adcnews.com. Our bet is that you'll be surprised how much there is that's exclusive to the Web. With new features and a new look, we think you'll find the sites to be worth visiting on a more regular basis.

That's our view of the world of materials handling this month. Enjoy the journey, wherever you are.