This Month in Modern: Celebrating the lift truck

For the third year running, the Modern editorial staff is using a majority of our August pages to celebrate the backbone, the workhorse, the most fundamental piece of equipment to be found in any materials handling operation—yet one that all too often gets taken for granted or run to the point of disintegration: the lift truck.

In fact, I don’t think you’ll be able to find a more complete snapshot of the current state of lift truck usage, best practices and technology than the issue of Modern you’re holding in your hands. This comprehensive coverage comes in the form of case studies illustrating how savvy end users are using lift trucks as platforms for technology to improve efficiencies (pages 22 & 44); original research revealing current lift truck buying and management trends (page 54); as well as an overview of the market-leading suppliers and how they’re diversifying their offerings to meet new demands (page 35).

Overall, the message in our annual Lift Truck Issue is pretty clear: While the fundamentals of what a lift truck does have stayed relatively unchanged over the years, how they’re being applied through the help of improved management technology and ergonomic design is helping users to streamline operations and greatly enhance the labor management experience for all involved.

A perfect example of this is the order verification process that’s been devised by DSC Logistics, a third-party logistics provider (3PL) based in Des Plaines, Ill. In his terrific Best Practices story this month, executive editor Bob Trebilcock walks us through how the 3PL has integrated scales and intelligent forks with software that compares the actual weight of the cases being picked to a pallet against an item master list in its warehouse management system.

The result is a lift truck-based system that reduces or eliminates the labor that was once solely dedicated to quality control at the tail end of the fulfillment process. According to Jim Chamberlain, DSC’s senior director of industrial engineering, it has also drastically cut shipping errors that once fell through the cracks.

“The idea was to address errors at the source rather then hope to catch them downstream before they ship,” says Chamberlain. And it’s working on many levels. He says that the solution pays for itself in one to two months when rolled out in a new DSC facility, and overall customer satisfaction is up throughout its entire supply chain because of its success.

“You think of a lift truck as a vehicle, or platform, to move something from point A to point B,” says Trebilcock. “At DSC, the lift truck is doing that; but in this instance, it’s also an enabler of another process while it’s stationary. It’s serving as a technology platform to perform a quality control process, and that’s something you don’t typically associate with lift trucks.”

While the DSC story illustrates a unique solution at work, our 2013 Lift Truck User Reader Survey offers a 30,000-foot view of current procurement and utilization best practices of U.S. fleet managers. In fact, I’ll be digging into all the findings with associate editor Josh Bond and Industrial Truck Association Chairman Jim Moran in a Webcast that takes place on Tuesday, August 27.

“The survey provides a window into the decisions fleet owners are making every day, and helps fleet managers benchmark their operations against some of the best,” says Bond. “From the findings and our discussion, fleet managers will pull out some nuggets to help them improve their operations.”