Automation, Lean join forces to keep products moving

Ever since Henry Ford perfected what has become the modern-day assembly line, manufacturers have attempted to improve the concept. It continues today as companies demand their plant personnel to continually do more with less. Whether it’s through installing new machines to increase throughput, incorporating new controls and components to make those machines run more efficiently or reconfiguring the line to improve the flow of product, manufacturers are faced with tough decisions every day on how to get the most out of their operations.

A process in and of itself, material handling is obviously a major component of manufacturing. Without it, parts and ingredients don’t arrive where needed on the plant floor, and finished products have nowhere to go. As with the manufacturing process, companies can look to material handling suppliers for ways to speed, smooth or otherwise improve their overall operations. And they’re doing exactly that, making their systems more Lean-compliant, more flexible and more intelligent – in some cases because they’ve been forced to.

“In the last 18 months or so, there’s been a tremendous focus on the Lean side of packaging, Lean distribution and things like mixed pallets; and then material handling systems that support that,” said Tré Lapeyre, product manager, material handling division for Intralox, Inc. at January’s ProMat Show in Chicago.

This places the focus on shipping pallets that are built to custom orders, Lapeyre said. Rather than assemble homogenous pallets of product, manufacturers have to find ways to build pallets with multiple products. And they have to do so accurately and on time to avoid facing charge-back situations.

“The impact then on manufacturers is, where you’re designed for continuous-load production of a homogenous product and palletizing, the requirements downstream are being pushed back up to you to create mixed pallets,” Lapeyre continued. “You’re going to have to take those pallets that you’ve created from that continuous-load production, store them, then depalletize and repalletize them to the mixed pallet, per the customer’s order.”

To accommodate this, manufacturers have to find new ways to design and implement their material handling systems. In doing that, Lapeyre said, efforts to increase speed and throughput are being put on the back burner in favor of making improvements in flexibility and adaptability. Those improvements are being accomplished in a number of ways: through added intelligence, automation and process change.

“Information technologies continue to get less expensive and gain more capabilities,” said Mike Ogle, senior director of technical and engineering services, Material Handling Industry of America. “Automation can easily go hand-in-hand with Lean, where the automation is built to be flexible. Lean also helps companies understand how to eliminate the waste of excessive handling by employing more cross docking and automated sortation, storage and retrieval.”

“We see many manufacturers taking on the distribution process themselves and moving this process upstream, into their manufacturing facilities,” said Martin Clark, director of marketing and business development for FKI Logistex North America. “With manufacturers shipping direct to customers, order-picking management software, automatic order picking and replenishment technologies and mixed load creation is no longer solely the domain of the distribution center.”

And the effect is not exclusive to end-of-line and distribution channels either. Processes along the manufacturing line are not exempt from big changes.

“Customers are now looking at really putting pressure on tooling integrators for quick-change models,” said Jeff McNeil, marketing manager for Gorbel. “Where before you had two different parts, you had two different tools; now [manufacturers] have the expectation that they’re going to be able to quickly change from one tool to the next, and some of them even have the expectation that you’re going to handle both parts with one tool,” McNeil said.

“Processes, software and hardware are being designed to help make sure that all material flow is accompanied by information flow by employing automatic identification and wireless communications. Information everywhere on demand will help collaboration with suppliers and customers, resulting in leaner supply chains,” Ogle said.

Having been one of the hottest topics in manufacturing for a few years now, RFID has the potential to have implicit effects on material handling. Yet, as the Wal-Mart and Department of Defense directives for its implementation have come and gone, those effects have yet to be seen on the large scale.

“Too much hype has likely hurt RFID more than helped,” Ogle said. “Yes, it is a great tool. No, it is not replacing bar code. RFID is really just another automatic identification technology, a complementary technology that helps greatly in situations where line of sight is not available or obtaining it hurts productivity,” Ogle said.

Lapeyre refers to the Gartner Group’s Hype Cycle, which defines five stages a new technology goes through before its widespread implementation, when discussing RFID. Following the 'technology trigger’ and 'peak of inflated expectations,’ which include the product launch and the development of expectations for the product’s capabilities, the product typically moves to the 'trough of disillusionment,’ where hopes and publicity for it fall due to slow acceptance and/or implementation.

“I think we’ve been in this trough of disillusionment for about a year-and-a-half to two years now with (RFID), and now we’re starting to see some acceptance,” he said. “I think we’ll start to see RFID maybe become more prominent. The mixed pallet load, if we had RFID tags on every one of those cases, you could do a quick scan and find out exactly what’s on that pallet.”

Yet another concern is cost. As with any investment a manufacturer makes, the effect on the bottom line is going to be key when changes to the material handling system are considered. Lapeyre sees a shift in how that change is viewed.

“We’re starting to see less emphasis on acquisition costs,” he said. “Because of the focus on Lean, because of the focus on flexibility, it’s more about which system is going to reduce my downtime? Which system is going to give me that strategic flexibility that I need, over time? So the focus now is on total cost of ownership.”

Even Mr. Ford would appreciate that.