The emphasis today across all
industry sectors is ensuring a sustainable Supply Chain, with the key
considerations of improving environmental and social impacts. This is achieved
through the management of raw materials, products and services at all stages
within the chain. Materials Handling Equipment (MHE) and the way in which it is
used plays an increasingly important role in the drive towards sustainability
and therefore developments in MHE can have a substantial impact on all areas of
the supply chain.
The biggest impact within the MHE
sphere over the last decade has been the increasing rate of introduction of
Returnable Transit Packaging (RTP) fleets across all areas of manufacturing,
engineering, food production and retail. Wooden pallets and crates, along with
their plastic and metal counterparts are all RTP products, although some more
suitable to the sustainable Supply Chain ethos than others.
In Europe, more complex RTP
'systems' were first developed on a large scale by the automotive industry
nearly 20 years ago with the increased Japanese influence in JIT manufacturing,
production and supply chain techniques. Automotive RTP solutions at first were
mainly basic engineered load carriers (pallet base boxes and panelled steel
stillages or racks), carrying the primary packaging which contained multiple
"loose packed" parts and components. Although the load carriers were
counted as RTP, the primary packaging was often one trip disposable plastic or
cardboard packaging.
With the introduction of JIT
production techniques, as well as more components being painted and finished
prior to shipping into plant, the requirements for a more disciplined approach
to production planning and receiving and handling parts at line-side, dictated
the move towards more component dedicated and surface protective MHE. This in
turn resulted in primary packaging being replaced by fixed inserts and
dividers, (known as dunnage), holding the component and parts in the outer load
container, and thus RTP systems were born. For more information - http://www.bellwether-institute.net/
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