How to Create a More Effective Material Handling System

Material handling takes up 95% of your time in a commercial paint line. But when optimizing material handling systems, businesses often concentrate on the upfront equipment costs while ignoring the long-term costs related to equipment location and parts transport. An effective material handling system starts with line design, which streamlines the process from fabrication to finish.

Let’s look at the inefficient way to set up a material handling system, a process common to many facilities.

Material Handling: The Wrong Way

In a typical flow, organizations put the welded parts on a skid, which is then loaded onto a forklift, which then transports those parts to the painting line. Then, everything needs to be loaded onto the conveyor system one by one. Finally, the painting can begin.

Afterward, parts are loaded back onto a skid and brought to the baking oven, where they are loaded, again one by one, and placed inside. Upon completion, each part still needs to be individually loaded back onto a skid to be forklifted to the boxing area or to the next step in the production process.

This material handling flow consists of numerous tasks and a great deal of transport, plus a forklift driver, a painting team, and so on. A lot of steps and a lot of manpower.

A Material Handling System—The Right Way

The right way saves costs and time. In this process, products are not loaded onto a skid after welding. Instead, they are loaded onto an easy-to-maneuver material handling cart with wheels. Forklifts are completely removed from the process, as well as forklift drivers.

The cart is then wheeled to the conveyor, where each part can be loaded onto the hooks to begin the painting process.          

Upon painting completion, the parts are once again loaded onto the cart and wheeled to the oven. Rather than removing each part individually, the entire assembly can be lifted and placed inside the oven for baking. Afterward, the entire rack can simply be placed back onto the cart. No forklifts and no individualized loading and unloading are required. As a result, time is saved, throughput is increased, and labor hours are minimized.

A Complete Material Handling Solution

At Mighty Hook, we specialize in tooling and hanging systems for everything below the conveyor, making process improvement easy. Our customizable solutions increase throughput, quality, safety and ergonomic design. These solutions include our customizable Material Handling Carts and our patented Angle Pivot Tooling System, which remarkably increases coating line density while improving output and accuracy. Every Mighty Hook product is engineered to streamline your assembly and fabrication process with lean manufacturing techniques.

Contact us to learn more.