Mate­ri­als han­dling is always also a direct way of deal­ing with the com­pa­ny’s returns. This is sig­nif­i­cant­ly depen­dent on pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, and the per­for­mance pro­vid­ed by many work­ers can sim­ply be increased by mak­ing the work easier.

Whether it’s bet­ter access to mate­ri­als thanks to clar­i­ty or sim­ply due to sen­si­ble and log­i­cal stor­age. A fur­ther aspect, sav­ings in stor­age space, is also impor­tant. For this rea­son effi­cient mate­ri­als han­dling as a com­po­nent of intra-logis­tics also always means use of mate­ri­als han­dling sys­tems. And, of course, trends which cov­er the entire logis­tics chain are also cur­rent­ly in focus here.

Trend 1: The use of robotics 

Automa­tion is con­tin­u­ing quick­ly and that is not an end in itself. Spe­cial­ist work­ers are sought-after and in demand but, seen glob­al­ly, they are also tak­ing part in a wage competition. 

Fur­ther­more, the age struc­ture of many logis­tics work­ers is chang­ing – they are get­ting old­er. So of course it makes sense to retain and use qual­i­fi­ca­tions, to keep to wage struc­tures and, at the same time, fill any gaps which appear. Robots which are capa­ble of car­ry­ing out increas­ing­ly com­plex tasks, and which can be used in com­pa­ra­bly tight spaces, are effec­tive­ly squar­ing the cir­cle. And they are doing so! The first solu­tions are on view in 2019. 

Trend 2: Net­worked digitalisation 

Online retail­ing is becom­ing more inten­sive. But it’s not only goods turnover which has to be accel­er­at­ed, pro­duc­tion of goods requires speed­ing up as well. 

The answer to all this is no longer sim­ply dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion of each iso­lat­ed process chain, but their dig­i­tal net­work­ing. Busi­ness man­age­ment sys­tems in the cloud are the first stage.

Trend 3: Flexibility 

It sounds banal. Of course it’s a fact that mate­ri­als han­dling depends on how many mate­ri­als are required in the first place. 

The require­ments on plan­ning are grow­ing, espe­cial­ly because every logis­tics strat­e­gy has to be more flex­i­ble than ever before. Polit­i­cal tur­moil or eco­nom­ic changes turn into chal­lenges if world trade part­ners iso­late them­selves or leave com­mu­ni­ties of states. The result, for exam­ple, could be that just-in-time is no longer pos­si­ble over short peri­ods – which does, of course, have an effect on mate­ri­als handling.

Trend 4: Dig­i­tal and ana­log solu­tions sup­ple­ment each other

The logis­tics branch has always been a pio­neer of sys­tem­at­ic think­ing. Even indi­vid­ual inven­tions were able to spread if the sys­tem was com­pat­i­ble with genial­i­ty. A clas­sic exam­ple of this is the con­tain­er. And of course the Euro pal­let. Nowa­days it’s impos­si­ble to imag­ine that they did­n’t exist at one time!

This prin­ci­ple is incor­po­rat­ed in the SIMPLY. mate­ri­als han­dling sys­tems. Stay­ing with the Euro pal­let: A trans­port trol­ley for Euro pal­lets which is exact­ly as wide as the pal­lets them­selves and saves on width is avail­able here.
The trans­port trol­ley for Euro pal­lets can be used as buffer stor­age, is extreme­ly manoeu­vrable with its 360° rotat­ing tow­bar and which is pro­vid­ed with a fix­ture for the forks used by any forklift.

Solu­tions such as the indus­tri­al plat­form trol­ley are typ­i­cal­ly SIMPLY. This is help­ful if the thing is to store, trans­port, sort and find heavy goods eas­i­ly. On top of this these solu­tions are even safer because they require less impro­vi­sa­tion.
Every com­po­nent in the mate­ri­als han­dling sys­tem is based on the pre­vi­ous one, the advan­tages are over­all, the appli­ca­tions are com­pat­i­ble and, on top of this, extreme­ly resilient. This is the case even if pri­or­i­ty is giv­en to devel­op and pro­duce tai­lor-made solu­tions for cus­tomers meet­ing spe­cif­ic chal­lenges. For a mate­ri­als han­dling sys­tem which prac­ti­cal­ly increas­es a com­pa­ny’s effi­cien­cy from a stand­ing start and can there­fore be eas­i­ly net­worked with every trend.