NO ROOM FOR ERROR

Material Handling Equipment is today more advanced that what one would have worked on even five years ago

- Molly R

Supply chain professionals are facing huge challenges in meeting demand volatility/peaking in recent times. However, due to the pandemic they cannot rely on the earlier model of scaling up labour to meet these peaks in demand. So, the only way they can manage this is by leveraging automation in material handling.

Sunil K Gupta, president, KION India, says, “With the pandemic, factors such as safety and contact-less operations are vital and being perused actively, and thus such material handling equipment (MHE) and automation solutions are in demand. Due to a surge in retail operations, customers are looking for automated MHE solutions and subsequently, the demand for such equipment has increased. Our solutions from Linde and Dematic brands ensure consistency, efficiency and flexibility. Our comprehensive understanding of intralogistics is used to analyse individual process steps and material flows to make it efficient and customized as per requirement.”

In India, the concept of automated MHEs or Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) remained only in studies till 2018- 19, says Manojit Acharya, MD, Jungheinrich Lift Truck India. “But recently, we see growing acceptance and now the demand for AGVs has picked up significantly. The last two years had been challenging to handle the supply chain due to shortage of manpower which in turn created scope for AGVs. Jungheinrich was the first to introduce Li-Ion technology in industrial truck segment in 2011 with pallet truck and now more than 90% of equipment of Jungheinrich can be offered with Li-Ion batteries,” he adds.

With more automation, there will also arise need to diversify the workforce.