opportunities to make big gains in
efficiency.
How much information should
you gather? The most important
thing is to cover not just normal
periods but also your least busy
and your peak times, says Susan
Comfort, product manager, nar-
row-aisle products marketing for
The Raymond Corp. But don’t
limit yourself to thinking about
the past, she cautions. “You should
also anticipate future needs. For
example, if your business changes,
then its peak demand might also
change.”
Pedriana agrees that it’s valuable
to look at historical data but adds
a caveat: Business practices are
changing so quickly, he says, that if
you go too far back, you may not
capture what’s actually happening
today. He further suggests regular
communication with upper man-
agement about strategic plans—
information that could affect DC
operations but often isn’t shared
until late in the game. “Too often,
higher-ups will start some strate-
gic initiative, and they assume the
engineers and the warehouse
managers will come up with a
solution to make it work,” he says.
“If they had known about it in
advance, they could have planned
for it.” (For more about choosing
lift trucks for a planned facility, see
sidebar.)
WHAT DO THE DATA TELL YOU?
Once the data are in hand, it’s time
to evaluate the information. Who
should be involved? “A misapplied
piece of equipment can be costly
in many ways, and the key to making the right decision is having the
team members involved in the
process who have a vested interest
in the equipment’s productivity,”
Pfleger says.
That could include the plant or warehouse manager, shift supervisors, the
maintenance manager, service technicians, the safety manager, and the lift
truck operators who will be performing
the activities in question. In addition,
says Komatsu’s Allmandinger, the company controller and “green” project
managers increasingly are involved.
Finally, the consulting engineer and
prospective lift truck suppliers can provide insight into what the data mean
and how they translate into a truck
choice.
Why so many players? Because each
one will have a different focus, explains
Andy Smith, senior marketing product
manager at Crown Equipment Corp.
Shift supervisors will focus on inefficiencies, while warehouse managers
might think about business cycles; they
may also be aware of a contract that’s
about to expire or a new one that could
influence the type of truck required.
Technicians, fleet managers, and forklift
operators will know what detracts from
the current fleet’s performance. The
local forklift provider can help to consolidate and prioritize their concerns,
and then put together a proposal based
on that input, he explains.
The team will consider what tasks (for
instance, picking, putaway, and load-ing/unloading trailers) and activities
(such as lifting and horizontal travel) the
lift trucks are currently doing, what they
should be doing, and what will be
expected of them in the future. It will
also examine the physical demands and
constraints on trucks and operators,
plus their efficiency and cost performance. The aim is to uncover inefficiencies, safety issues, and excessive costs—
all signs of a possible mismatch between
a truck and a particular application, or
that the truck you plan to buy won’t be a
good fit. Just a few examples of what the
analysis might turn up:
Please visit us at ProMat Booth #205
▪ Trucks that move into a rack should
be lifting 25 percent of the time, says
Comfort. If they’re being used more for
horizontal transport, then it could be
more cost-effective and efficient to position those trucks near the racks and use
