Material Handling Edge Blog 
 A blog for young professionals in the forklift, conveyor and general material handling industries.  

Hello everyone. I’m sure, like me, all of you are already looking forward to a long Thanksgiving weekend. This will be my last entry until Monday when I return refreshed and several pounds heavier. Before I left for the weekend, I wanted to take this opportunity to pass on something that MHEDA Executive Director Liz Richards sent me this morning.

 Three Material Handling Industry of America (MHIA) Industry Groups—The Crane Manufacturers Association of America (CMAA), Hoist Manufacturers Institute (HMI) and Monorail Manufacturers Association (MMA)—formed the Overhead Alliance recently to promote the crane, hoist and monorail industries as alternative lifting and moving solutions that can reduce accidents, improve workplace health and safety, reduce product damage, improve workflow, lower costs and reduce environmental impact.  For more information, and to download a brochure from the Overhead Alliance, click here.

 This seems like a pretty cool initiative. Any time we can raise industry awareness, that’s alright by me.

Have a great holiday everyone!

If you have kept up with the news reports over the last few months, you will have noticed an alarming trend impacting international shipping — pirates have returned. Unfortunately, these aren’t the funny, rum-swilling, Disney-esque pirates that we’ve seen in the movies. These are serious Somoli pirates armed with AK-47s and RPGs. There have been several high-profile events including the hijacking of the Maersk Alabama—an event that went on for days before United States snipers put an end to it.

So this has to be something that’s on the mind of every self-respecting shipping executive in the world, right? Wrong. According to a recent report by Noha Tohamy of AMR research, only two percent of global companies cite piracy as their top concern.

Most companies are more concerned with weak demand, commodity price volatility and product quantity failures. According to the article:

“Companies rank these risks higher than piracy because the likelihood of an attack is extremely low and the impact of such an attack on the flow of products in a broader supply chain is miniscule.”

It seems companies are more concerned with the economy plundering their coffers than pirates pillaging their boats.

A few months ago, I blogged about a forklift video game that hit the UK market. Well recently another forklift simulator has hit the market. This one, however, is no game. It is a Forklift Safety Simulator that delivers in-depth OSHA-based forklift safety standard training. It puts users through real-life situations and forces them to make decisions based on the letter of the law.

While nothing can truly replace on-site training, this is certainly a cool way to supplement that real-life experience.

A few days ago, my editor was flipping through an old issue of Wired magazine and stumbled upon an article that she thought my readers might want to read. It’s a list of the “10 Best uses For RFID Tags.” It’s a somewhat a tongue-in-cheek look at oddball uses for RFID. Here’s the list as Wired printed it.

1// Saguaro cacti
On the landscaping black market, these succulents sell for more than $1,000. Arizona’s Saguaro National Park plans to use RFIDs to track hot cacti.

2// Indian elephants
The New Delhi forest department requires pet jumbos be chipped to prevent trafficking. No parades until implanted.

3// Surgical sponges
One out of every thousand or so intra-abdominal surgery patients “retains” a sponge. Oops! With SmartSponges, docs can find stowaways by passing a wand over the body.

4// Mexicans
Security firm Xega uses GPS chips to track kidnapped people—a pretty big market in a nation where 6,500 were abducted last year.

5// Pirelli tires
A chip inside the new Cyber Tyre transmits info on road conditions and friction coefficients to the car’s computer.

6// Clubbers
At Barcelona’s Baja Beach Club, VIPs are injected with RFIDs linked to debit accounts, making wallets passé. Handy when all you’re wearing is a thong.

7// Tokyo
The city aims to blanket itself with microchips—from bus stops to restaurants. Tourists may soon get maps, schedules, tips, and other info just by waving their cell phones.

8// Police badges
The Blackinton SmartShield badge hides an ID chip, preventing knockoffs. Good idea: Remember Terminator 2?

9// Inmates
Forced to release prisoners due to overcrowding, Britain wants to chip them. Cops would know if, say, a felon enters a school.

10// Cat doors
Kitty flaps are great—until you find a possum hanging from your towel rack. The Pet Porte waves through only preapproved critters.

RFID is a technology that’s been around for a while, but it still growing. While some of these may be “funny” uses, it makes you realize how much potential these little chips hold. Thanks to Wired for putting this together.

Today one of my colleagues forwarded me a video that i just had to share with you guys. How many of you loved Legos as a kid? I know I did. I spent countless hours on the floor building a race car or a fort for my army men.

Well, not surprisingly, the folks over at Lego Mindstorms love to play with Legos too. Only when they play with them, they don’t mess around. Today i came across a video that proves just that. The creative minds at Lego Mindstorms created a complete WMS out of Legos and some other items.

It uses Microsoft BizTalk, Windows Workflow Foundation and C# to stitch everything together. Watch the demo of the system in action where a SMS message from a cell phone activates the system, the first robot grabs a box from the warehouse and delivers it to the second robot which drives the package to its destination.

Pretty cool huh? To watch a video of the construction process and the finished product, check out below.

Hello All! I hope that by now you’ve all checked out the November issue of the magazine. It’s got some great stuff in it. As I’m sure you can all relate to, though, here at MHEDA Edge, we don’t have the time to sit around and gloat about it. In fact, we’re already well into production on the December issue.

I’d like to use today’s entry to give my loyal readers a sneak preview of what to expect. Since this will be the last issue of the decade, i had a talk with MHEDA Executive Director Liz Richards about how far the association came this year and how far it can go in the future.

We’re also doing something new with the On The Job section of the magazine. This month we’re having three guest authors write pieces about different innovative strategies that they have employed. These strategies are, in part, why their companies have been able to make it through this trying time. I don’t want to give away the topics just yet, but you won’t be disappointed.

In the meantime, please keep stopping by. As always, if you have any topic ideas, comments or questions, just shoot me an e-mail at Dan@MHEDAedge.org

Today I would like to take a minute to salute all of the men and women of the Armed Forces. This Veterans Day we’re once again reminded of the sacrifices these people made for our country and for us.  And to those of you who are in harm’s way, you’re in our thoughts. Thanks for everything you do!

 I’d also like to take the time to highlight MHEDA’s Military tradition. Below you will find some previous TMJ articles on material handling and the Armed Forces:

 Tips for Hiring Veterans

 Material Handling on the Front Lines

 The U.S. Military Logistics System

 Doing Business with the Armed Forces

 How to Handle a Deployed Employee

 Military Leadership Principals in Material Handling Business

As many of you know, I do more than just write MHEDA Edge. I also help with the daily news headlines at wikiMHEDA. Lately we’ve been noticing a promising trend—distribution centers seem to be cropping up all over the country. My colleague Chris Powers discussed this in his blog on Wednesday.

Just this week there have been a ton of DC openings:

• Hoya Opens Bollingbrook DC
• United Natural Foods plans Texas distribution center
• Andes International Establishes East Coast Warehouse 
• Home Depot adds new distribution center in Topeka
• Fujifilm to expand Greenwood County distribution center

That’s one a day, not a bad week at all. For an economy that everyone says is as bad as it’s ever been, those are some encouraging numbers. Each one of those distribution centers is going to make some material handling company a great deal of money. The key is to make sure it’s you. For tips on how to make it happen, check out the latest issues of the Edge and the Journal.

Have a great weekend everyone!

It’s that time of the month again when you get to see the results of all the hard work we put in over here! The November issue of MHEDA Edge is available today. This month’s issue takes a look at leadership and we’ve jam –packed it with advice on motivating others.

 As usual, my favorite piece in the magazine isn’t one that I wrote. It’s an article called “Thoughts On Leadership” and it features advice from 9 of the material handling industry’s young leaders. They offer advice on everything from keeping an even keel to embracing change. I think each person’s comments offer something unique that you’re going to be able to take back to the office with you.

 We also have an article from Waldo Waldman in this issue. For those of you who don’t know, Waldo is a decorated fighter pilot who has flown missions all over the world. Now Waldo travels the country giving speeches that relate his experiences as a pilot to the business world. I think you’re all going to enjoy the way he blends battle stories with business advice!

 That’s not all we’ve got for you either. Bluff Manufacturing’s Ron Gilleland wrote an article about gaining customer loyalty and I put together a piece on 5 essential leadership skills. So head on over to http://www.mhedaedge.org and check it out. You won’t be disappointed!

Have you ever seen those Southwest airline commercials where someone makes an embarrassing mistake and the voice-over says “Want to get away for a while?” Well, there’s one forklift driver in Russia that could use a plane ticket. If you haven’t seen the video yet, this individual backed his truck into a row of pallet rack that was loaded with vodka and cognac. The collision caused the entire row of rack, and the one across from it, to come crashing down. In total, there was more than $100,000 in damage done. Fortunately, the driver received only minor injuries (and possibly a pink slip). In just a few days, the video has gone viral. On YouTube, it has already topped 175,000 hits. Check out the video below.

Aside from the obvious astonishment that the driver is ok and the understandable sadness at the waste of good vodka, when I watch the video, a few things come to mind. First of all, this video could be a commercial for rack protection equipment. While there’s no guarantee that it would’ve prevented the accident, when you have that much money sitting on a shelf, it makes sense to protect it.

Second, it reinforces the importance of proper operator training. It’s hard to believe that an OSHA-certified driver that went through regular safety training each year would’ve made this sort of rookie mistake. When putting a forklift in reverse, you can’t just slam the accelerator or you’re looking for trouble. Unfortunately, this guy found it.

Finally, I can’t tell what brand of truck the guy is driving (his co-worker seems to be using a Komatsu), but the strength of the driver’s compartment is remarkable. Both trucks are completely buried by the boxes of booze, but the trucks held up. The strength of the compartments saved both operators from serious injury. This just goes to show how important all R&D that goes into making these trucks safe is. Had it not been for the cages protecting them, who knows what would have happened to the drivers.

I suppose the moral of the story is, don’t drink and drive and don’t drive into drinks.