Five Key Ways to Improve Your Material Handling Processes
Westfield Steel is proud to partner with several material handling systems manufacturers to create steel material handling systems for the automotive and trucking industries as well as grain handling, aggregate, mining, and excavation equipment manufacturers.
In our Terre Haute facility, stock steel is fabricated, assembled and finished to order, for lift tables, tilt tables, steel racks, steel carts, air bearing turntables, mechanical steel turntables, automated conveyor systems, operator platforms and many other material handling systems. These products are then ready for our material handling system customers to add hydraulic or pneumatic systems to them and deliver them to the end-user.
Save money, streamline processes and improve employee safety.
In our years of helping our customers develop efficient material handling systems, we’ve identified five keys ways to improve material handling processes :
- Optimize your space and workflow. Whether your material handling systems are used for storage or assembly, make sure you’re using every inch of your facility to its best advantage. This will help you eliminate workflow bottlenecks and help eliminate occurrences of over-handling, which can negatively impact efficiency and increase the potential for human error.
- Update your technology. To save utility costs and avoid downtime, replace aging equipment. To save money on manpower and extend the life of your equipment, utilize automation such as timers and sensors.
- Get employee feedback. The best source for process improvement is the person who actually performs the process. If you have a team of loyal, experienced employees, tap into their expertise. Conduct regular process evaluation meetings and get input from the team any time a new material handling need arises to ensure you are creating the most ergonomic, efficient, safe and cost-effective product handling process.
- Constantly monitor safety practices. Ensure that your employees are observing established safety practices at all times, including turning off equipment when it’s not in use, maintaining safe speeds when moving materials, and considering load weight and any potential risk factors prior to moving materials.
- Commit to continuous training. Employee manuals with detailed process instructions or better yet, training videos will help you reduce costly errors, and ensure that every employee on the team is handling materials safely and efficiently.
Why partner with Westfield Steel? Meet Scoob.
“We enjoy collaborating with our customers’ engineers to create ergonomic material handling systems for a variety of industries,” said Steve “Scoob” Niedermeier, Production Control Manager. “Just like we do with any steel project we take on, we look for ways to make a steel product that does exactly what they need it to do, but also, we look for any ways we can to make their process more cost-effective or efficient. We’re always thinking about streamlining and lean manufacturing. Because we have so many years of experience in material handling, particularly in the automotive industry, I really feel that we’re uniquely positioned to serve production system and material handling system manufacturers, and help them save time and money, for their businesses and for their customers.”
Let us do more with steel for you
If you’re looking for a reliable steel partner for your material handling system needs, Westfield Steel can do more with steel for YOU. We are ISO 9901: 2015-certified, and our welding team is certified by both the American Welding Society (AWS) and the Canadian Welders Bureau (CWB.)
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