The advantages of intelligent warehouse management
August 3, 2016A management and control software increases performance, provides a much more efficient work system, and minimises errors. Get full insights of WMS advantages.
Logistics articles
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Panamaximization
May 30, 2016The Panama Canal opened in the summer of 1914, carving a link between two oceans and revolutionizing maritime travel. The new expansion project is 98% finished as of May 2016.
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House Thieves
May 24, 2016Studies show that instances of internal theft of warehouse goods rise in bad economies and that the solutions are as simple as they are ignored.
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Advantages of a clad-rack warehouse
April 5, 2016This type of constructions are integrated buildings formed by the racks themselves, whose structure is coupled to both the roof and wall cladding. Clad-rack warehouses have achieved great importance in the last 30 years, mainly because of the need for space optimisation, and resulting in the construction of buildings that are taller than 45m.
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Logistics software: the cloud is the future
March 15, 2016Due to the continuous evolution of technology, our business landscape is changing at a high speed. One of the most important paradigm changes that has taken place in recent years has been caused by the software industry, with the creation of cloud-based applications. The logistics operations of companies have quickly adapted to this change, demanding that software applications be implemented which are increasingly compatible with the cloud.
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FEFO/FIFO impact on the warehouse
November 18, 2015FEFO/FIFO is a technique for managing material that aims to consume or supply products by selecting those closest to expiration first, and when the expiration is the same, the oldest first.
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Playing Mind Games
July 6, 2015American engineering has taken a power dive in the span of a generation. Every year for the last two decades, upwards of 250,000 students retreat to their separate parts of the nation to spend six weeks designing, programming, building and preparing robots to do battle against other student groups, determining which gang of young engineers built the best robot.
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Lean and Green in Sumter
June 15, 2015Corporations, normally the slowest sector to embrace the ideals of a habitat stewardship, are finally acknowledging the advantages of bringing about environmental practices that will result in reduced costs and streamlined manufacturing. In this sense, the Sumter facility is one of the major accomplishments Interlake Mecalux has achieved in the last decade, because of having accumulated zero pounds of hazardous waste in 2010 and therefore it has been categorized as a Conditionally Exempt Small Quantity Generator by the South Carolina Environmental Excellence Program (SCEEP).
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Cold Hard Cash vs.Greenhouse Gas
May 18, 2015The U.S. market has dropped its total GHG emissions by 35 percent over the last two decades without the governance of the EPA. The EPA will continue its efforts started in January to reduce GHG emissions in stationary sources, but one the industry said is a burden unnecessarily placed on them because of the sloppiness of other manufacturing industries.
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Open Roads
April 21, 2015President Barack Obama and Mexican President Felipe Calderón met in March to negotiate a solution to the border discrepancy affecting commercial transportation flow between both countries. Stipulations, made between the trucking industries of both countries in the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), were not implemented by the U.S and after a period of unrest, both presidents agreed that the solution needs to be based on a program of reciprocity, safety and efficiency of the system.
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The Weakest Link
April 21, 2015In the last decade, numerous pandemics have walloped the logistics field. Preparing a supply chain to be flexible for any challenge the market bears is a multi-pronged strategy not only to subvert breaks in the chain, but also to weigh options between delivery speed and cost.Multi-sourcing one’s supply chain is not a new idea, and despite the assurance that disasters will eventually strike, many companies remain undecided on the best way to divide and hedge their suppliers.
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Never make the Second Hand the First Option
April 20, 2015Smaller companies in the United States see the used marked as their first option when outlifting storage installations. While used racking might make sense if all components are in perfect condition, there is never guarantee of a used rack´s calculated strength. Apart from knowing in advance aspects of the rack such as what connector should be used, what is the maximum weight it was made up to resist, etc., aspects like the structural length of the components have changed over the years and should be taken into account. Nevertheless, among the advantages of buying used rack, we find that their price is right if they are in good condition; they are more readily available with shorter lead time, and better for the environment.
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Inside the margin of success
April 5, 2015Even considering the fact that logistics is the blackbone of the supply chain and it focuses on performance and costs, feww companies make it their firsti priority when it comes to take critical decisions. The two main forms of logistics are described: Production logistics and management logisitcs.
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Smarter warehouses save energy and money
April 5, 2015The energy saving strategies used in automated storage mean lower electric bills and many solutions are simpler than one may think. Automatic warehouses save energy in many ways; from using efficient, lighter engines in the AS/RS systems, intelligent motion calculations and regenerative power supplies to the simplest of all energy saving methods: turning off the lights.
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Product Spotlight: Selective Pallet Racking
March 24, 2015Advertising feature on the Pallet Racking System, backbone of the Mecalux products. The most popular product exemplifies how minor features provide huge advantages: ideal for any warehouse, offers direct access to each pallet, simple stock management and adaptation to any product volume, weight or size. It is resistant over time, too. Among other advantages, it is worth hightlighting the unique design of the racking uprights with extra bends, their painting process called cataphoresis, and so on.
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The dueling promise of 3-D printing
March 24, 2015In a in a mass production-led world, those inside the material handling industry have thus far not felt the tug of urgency from additive manufacturing (AM). 3D printing is when 3D solid objects are made from a model on a computer. 3D printing is done by building up the object layer by layer. The trajectory of 3-D printing suggests that the manufacturing process will eventually create replacement parts for weapon systems, marine products and land and air vehicles.
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Fueling Sales of Fuel Cells
March 22, 2015Fuel cells are leading the way in alternative energy innovations. American industries have started deploying fuel cell technology. Though it will almost certainly be automobiles that eventually bring fuel cells into the homes of average consumers, it has so far proven to be the warehousing and manufacturing industries bringing fuel cells to the automotive industry.Part of what makes lift trucks a more viable outlet for fuel cell technology is that lifts are smaller, carry less daily risk and are not produced in the same quantities as automobiles.
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The Clouds Roll in
March 9, 2015With third-party computing, all actions are performed through the Internet on the host’s website and then saved to the third-party’s massive hard drive, rather than the user’s personal computer memory. The implementation of third-party computing (known as "the Cloud") in the material handling industry has developed in the form of warehouse management software. While clouds offer clients lower operating costs and increased availability of programs, the lack of privacy remains the biggest deterrent for customers weighing the pros and cons of cloud computing, apart from other items such as the delay in troubleshooting and the question of data ownership within the cloud. Nevertheless, alternative solutions as Software as a Service (SaaS) make the difference since they allow working in a shared server but it permits to store private information separately. Similarly, Interlake Mecalux offers a subset version of its EasyWMS, EasyWMS Autoinstall as a SaaS, that allows multiple warehouses to have a centralized point of connectivity and data storage, which gives the client the ability to access data from multiple warehouses, rather than simply the warehouse they are in.
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Rising to the top
February 15, 2015Vertical lift modules (VLM) are incorporated as strategic implements that address specialized storage needs, reducing labor costs and optimizing warehouse floor space. Among the AS/RS modules produced by Interlake Mecalux, the Clasimat Vertical Lift Module is climbing to the top as the eminent member of the VLM family, taking advantage of a warehouse's vertical space. Among its advantages can be counted in the higher placement at a lower cost; the safety of its use and the reduction of personnel footprint thanks to the combination of EasyWMS + Clasimat, among other items. .
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The Guiding Force Within
February 15, 2015The adoption of automated warehouses has sought to mitigate human-error factors. Automated systems require guidance in order to execute their functions precisely. The Mecalux Group’s Galileo control software may be the companion of the Automated Storage/Retrieval Systems (AS/RS), and its reliable presence helps get the job done. Within a Warehouse Control System (WCS), Galileo acts as a general coordinator, establishing a control hierarchy enabling AS/RS units to carry out their tasks according to the protocols established by the Warehouse Managing System (WMS). The WMS — such as the Mecalux Group’s Easy WMS — assigns a series of orders to Galileo, which helps it determine a take-off order and regulates the object task once they are in the air.