The principles of material handling serve as guidelines to applying sound judgment and a good checklist for enhanced avenues. Though one principle may conflict another, the situation being designed is the only determinant of the right. There are 20 essential principles of material planning:
- Principle of Planning: Activities related to material handling and storage activities need to be pre-planned to get the maximum operating efficiency in every respect. This planning will consider every action, every storage requirement and any delay in order to reduce production expenditure.
- Principle of System: The system concept is the core of material handling that ensures that all equipment for material handling co-function for effectiveness. The principle of system brings together several procedural steps and integrates them into a single system from vendor to the plant and to the customers. The process involves integrating numerous handling activities into a coordinated system of receiving, operations, production, storage, vendor, packaging, warehousing, transportation, shipping and customers.
- Principle of Material Flow: This principle of material flow states the requirement of an operation sequence and equipment layout to optimize material flow.
- Principle of Simplification: The simplification principle is based on simplifying the material handling process by using cost reduction formula, such as eliminating, combining and reducing irrelevant movement and equipment.
- Principle of Gravity: Gravity can be used in different ways for the movement of materials between work stations. Therefore, wherever possible, use gravity for material movement.
- Principle of Space: Just like gravity, it is always advisable to make optimal use of the cubic capacity of the warehouse. Some of the material handling equipments that fosters space utilization includes overhead conveyors, mezzanines and racks.
- Principle of Unit Size: While choosing a unit load, factors like its strength, cost, versatility, durability, size and ease of use should be considered, to enhance the size, quantity or weight of unit loads or flow rate.
- Principle of Mechanization: Mechanization adds control to remove manual moving system, and instead use mechanical tool set for easy movement of material.
- Principle of Automation: Automated storage and retrieval systems aid in putting materials into storage racks automatically and removing them whenever required. Most of the machines are automated as material handling equipment loads and unloads the machine. Automation is futuristic and therefore, the users of the manual moving system should consider using automated storage and retrieval systems for production, handling and storage activities.
- Principle of Equipment Selection: All aspects related to material handling including the movement and technique to be used should be considered while selecting the equipment for it.
- Principle of Standardization: The principle indicates standardization of material handling methodologies, and the types and sizes of handling equipment. The costs of such systems can be classified into two categories: (1) ownership cost of the system, including the initial purchase price and maintenance costs; and (2) system operation costs, including the personnel training costs, energy cost, and direct and indirect costs related with using the system.
- Principle of Adaptability: Make use of methods and equipment related to material handling to perform different tasks and applications in the best possible way, where using special purpose equipment is not validated. For instance, buying standard sized pallets to handle a wide array of parts and storage equipments to store different products. This economises the adaptability too.
- Principle of Packaging Weight: Make sure the equipment you buy is not bigger than required. The term ‘tare weight’ indicates the weight of the packaging material. Materials are packaged to prevent damage during transportation. Since packaging is expensive, your goal should be to keep the tare weight to the minimum and save money.
- Principle of Utilization: Make proper utilization of operators and material handling equipment. For an effective management of the workload of the labour and equipment, you need to identify the work requirement, daily frequency and the time required per movement. Make a plan for optimal utilization handling manpower and equipment.
- Principle of Maintenance: This principle states that equipment for material handling should be maintained through periodic and planned preventive maintenance system, which is quite cheap than emergency maintenance. The program should include schedules for each of the equipments used for material handling and repairs for pallets and storage facilities. Missing slats on pallets can damage the product and create safety issues. Therefore, plan for preventive maintenance and scheduled repairs for your material handling equipments.
- Principle of Obsolescence: Proper maintenance records need to be in place, to find out about worn-out equipments and make arrangements for the replacement of obsolete handling techniques and equipment for improvement in operations.
- Principle of Control: The inventory control system should include material handling systems to manage the otherwise expensive material costing. Technological innovations, such as RFID, conveyor, bar code, etc. facilitate the incorporation of quality inspection, inventory control and item tracking. This also reduces the need for material tracking physically. A well-structured material handling system enable incredible savings in operation schedules and considerable enhanced costs, precision and reliability. Material handling activities contribute to enhancing the control of production inventory and order handling.
- Principle of Capacity: The use of handling equipment helps in achieving required production capacity.
- Principle of Performance: This principle indicates that the effectiveness of material handling performance should be determined in terms of expense per unit handled. Material handling is executed by labour (the input) and the measurement of output would be in terms of units of materials moved. Thus, productivity can be enhanced by increasing the units of material moved or decreasing the labour hours. The performance can also be measured by the formula:
Performance includes much more than just labour. The total operational expenditure should be segregated from the material handling expenses to get a better ratio.
- Principle of Safety: Manual handling is perhaps the most critical component of material handling. While at the same time, material handling equipment can also lead to safety issues, and therefore, safety procedures, methods and training should be considered part of every material handling plan. It is the management’s responsibility to provide for a safer working environment. Safety considerations are important for selecting the right material handling equipment and therefore, the methodology.
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