Guest Blog by Material Handling Network

It goes beyond getting the latest and greatest equipment or doing this year what your competition did last year. “Best practices” in the material handling industry encompasses the correlation between your operations and costs and how best to communicate it. It’s imperative to ask and to know: are you getting the best returns on your investments?

While making your evaluation, keep this in mind: best practices are always business-specific, even for businesses in the same industry. It begins with understanding your product and your target. Every operation – from warehouse materials to transportation systems – is incredibly unique and calls for great attention to detail.

It’s important to define mission-critical functions and project processes. For example: Who is your primary communication with? What are your client’s needs and do you possess the means to satisfy them? Are you the best solution to their problem?

A project begins at implementation, and it’s crucial to have a teamwork-mentality from the start. If an operations manager implements projects and the project manager discovers after some investigation it’s either inoperable or doesn’t fit objectives, it will hit a communications roadblock. To avoid such issues, create a robust communications plan that spells out what information gets disseminated where.

How can it be accomplished?

With technology, it places the focus on the minimization of touch labor and the reconfiguration of value-add operations and handling distribution services. And as modern day material handling solutions become more complex, the higher degree of technology ensures that solutions are logically integrated into the operations process.

Today, material handling services focus on being affordable, supportable and reliable, aiming to deliver uncompromised services and communications—from start to finish—and set the industry standard.

Thank you for the great insights Material Handling Network. Check out the MHN blog at http://www.materialhandlingnetwork.com/blog/index.php.