Tom Andel

Materials Handling: a researcher's dream
January 31, 2008

An open letter to Jeff:

Thanks for posting a response to my recent blog entry. You say you’re a student looking for an aspect of materials handling that will catch your professor’s imagination? If you’re new to this art and science, I understand how you may not have found anything yet. However, if the item on the forklift rodeo we just posted roped you in, I recommend you look back over some of Modern’s recent issues. You’ll find items about hydrogen fuel cells used in forklifts, hospitals using principles of lean materials handling flow to better serve patients, a space conveyor that may some day send shipments into space, how principals of nanotechnology might supplement transportation and distribution in some cases by allowing people to manufacture their own products rather than have them delivered.

I’ll leave it at that for now, but if those tidbits don’t get your professor’s attention, nothing will. Keep reading MMH to get more ideas. Eventually you’ll get great ideas of your own just from reading mainstream papers like USA Today. Just the other day there was an article on how bulk shipments of food and drugs from China were getting hung up at US ports because of FDA-imposed import alerts. These alerts are spurring greater demand for U.S.-produced products in those categories. How will this affect investments in new materials handling technologies for handling bulk products in the U.S.? There’s a research paper right there.

If you’d like to discuss these things in greater depth, Jeff, give me a call. And certainly, keep reading Modern. There’s more where all that came from.

Posted by Tom Andel on January 31, 2008 | Comments (0)