The days of taking your shipments and using the handcart to place it in the corner of the warehouse until you think you need it for future production is not anywhere near state-of-the-art. While some companies are evaluating or even experiencing the benefits of conveyer belts, modular building design or custom pallet sizing and racking. With this all said it is no time to get lost in the dark ages.

The local golf ball manufacturer has a bit of a mom & pop flavor to it. The growth of the company to this point has come fairly easily. The materials for the two different golf balls they put into production use the same materials from the same supplier. This not only made things easy on the accounting team but was a breeze for the warehouse and production workers and supervisors. The supplier was already adapting the business processes in their company to the most current measuring, shipping, accounting and customer coordination pieces.

The company did use computers but, not a huge presence of technology in the warehouse. Most all of the material handling for them was standardized. The same size pallets and carts were used to organize and tote things around the storage areas. Simply put, shipments were received each Monday afternoon, and customer orders were shipped on Fridays. The company did not do a very good job at processing larger jobs or filling the bigger orders. The smaller sized ones were routine, but all manual completion.

An engineering team from a local Salt Lake City Material Handling company made a few visits to the executive offices and determined the Golf Ball “True Bounce” was the most popular product they produced and sold. The popularity was growing at a steady pace, partly attributed to the web presence.

Each Product or Material has a Measurable Life Cycle

The offer from the Material Handling Company was simple; they predicted they could follow the life cycle of a single golf ball through the entire production cycle. They also proposed compartmentalizing every portion of the golf ball’s movement. Finally, they would compare the results to baseline data and templates.

Do the Math; Logistics Improvements with Materials Handling proves Epic

Once the data is collected and the baseline comparisons are done, tweaks can easily be made. Preliminary baseline comparisons often reveal areas of opportunity thus resulting in significant process improvements. Another benefit of baseline comparisons is that they have a tendency to flush out any red-flag scenarios often requiring immediate attention.

By Rodney Hall

Rodney is an experienced writer for businesses in the warehouse logistics industry such as HOJ Engineering in Utah, and feels it’s important to note that materials handling Salt Lake is highly regarded throughout the world. You can also find Rodney on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.