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By Staff -- Modern Materials Handling, 2/1/2001

50 years ago

WITH THE TREND TOWARD MORE AND LONGER MOTOR TRUCK SHIPMENTS, THE SHIPPING dock is becoming a key handling area. Yet all too often a fine mechanical handling system stops at the dock, and the material is laboriously moved in and out of the trucks by hand. Any handling technique that doesn't deliver the goods into the carrier vehicle is not a 100% job, and certainly someone is missing handsome savings. From a feature on the dock height problem

YOU'VE CUT YOUR COSTS WITH MECHANIZED EQUIPMENT. YOU CAN CUT THEM MORE WITH mechanized controls. Photo-electric relays will speed movement of materials by automatically making handling decisions for you. They'll start, stop, and route materials without human help. They don't cost much and they don't make mistakes. From a feature on photo-electric relays

25 years ago

AT LASTA DISTRIBUTION CODE SYMBOL FOR SHIPPING CASES. AFTER A 10 MO. STUDY, THE Distribution Research & Education Foundation has selected a standard, machine-readable symbol that can be read by fixed-position scanners as well as light pen wands and hand-held laser scanners. You'll be able to automatically identify incoming loads in receiving, as well as outbound shipments, without any paperwork at all. From the "Management Newsletter"

VINYL STRIP CURTAINS, INTRODUCED WITHIN THE PAST YEAR AND A HALF, ARE BEING OFFERED as an innovative alternative to traffic doors. They are proving to be especially valuable as closures for areas, requiring pass-through access, that have dimensions too large or too small to be economically or efficiently handled by standard traffic doors. From a feature on vinyl strip curtains

10 years ago

U.S. MANUFACTURERS OF AUTOS, ELECTRONIC COMPONENTS, AND MANY OTHER ITEMS INCREAS ingly pattern their production operations along the lines of methods pioneered in Japan. Dr. Edward Frazelle, professor at Georgia Institute of Technology, suggests that the U.S. now faces, or shortly will encounter, some of the same factors that influenced Japanese companies when designing and justifying automated storage and handling systems. From "News & Trends"

ANY EASY FIRST STEP TO TAKE TOWARD CUTTING OPERATING COSTS IS TO CALCULATE THE economic service life of each of the trucks in your fleet. This is the point at which the truck's resale or trade-in value is equal to the total annual cost of maintaining the vehicle. It can be used as a simple guideline showing when to replace each truck. From "Industrial Truck Report"