Defining material handling equipment will not requires much time, but identifying and employing the suitable equipment will definitely going to take. Wide assortment of tools and machines are being employed in workshops for lifting and transferring industrial goods. Such tools and machines are referred as material handling equipment. Some are cranes, forklifts, hoists and loaders.
Importance and their demands:
The longing for material handling equipments is arousing in industrial sector. Throughout the process of manufacturing, distributing, supplying as well as disposing goods their always remains need of moving, storing and protecting goods. There are many sub-stages in the manufacturing segment itself that requires handling various sized objects. The task of storing raw materials, transporting them to the work shop followed by assembling as well as transporting finished goods to the warehouse, requires the need of respective type of material handling equipments.
Well the size of object is not the only factor of concern, their weight, temperature conditions as well as chemical properties also invites the use of handling tools. Employing them will not only improve the efficiency, but also maximize the safety standards.
Material Handling Equipments – Their Types:
The wide assortment of material handling equipments delivers diverse range of storage units, vehicles, appliances, tools and accessories. These equipments are powered through mechanical, electrical, hydraulic as well as through pneumatic forces. Classification of these equipment can be done on the basis of powering and processing tasks.
Transporting Equipments, as name implies these equipments are used for moving industrial goods and raw materials from one location to another. Major sub-categories includes:-
- Conveyors ( long belt, snake sandwich belt and single belt)
- Cranes (bridge, stacker, gantry and jib cranes)
- Trucks ( platform truck, lift trucks, hand trucks and pallet jacks)
Positioning Equipments are used for handling material giving right positional direction to the goods so that they can be stored or transported later on. Such tools are favored most of the time in industries as positioning equipments works in single location for subsequent handling, machining, transporting and storing. Balances, ball transfer balances, air film devices and dock levelers are some of commonly used positioning equipments.
Unit Load Formation equipments are mainly used for restricting materials in order to maintain balance while handling and transporting single load. Palatalizes, bins, pallets, crates, tote pans are some examples of unit load formation equipments.
Identification Equipments are employed for collecting information and communicating the same for maintaining coordination among the flow of materials inside a warehouse or factory. Some are bar codes, magnetic stripe, Machine vision, radio frequency (RF) tag, Portable data terminal and Electronic data interchange (EDI).
Storage Equipments are mainly used for buffering the raw materials for a period of time. Some storage equipments include Flow-through rack, Push-back rack, Selective pallet rack, Drive-through rack and Storage carousel.
