Migrating towards modern material handling practices

By OEM Update Editorial October 9, 2018 2:27 pm IST

Over the years, the need for mechanised and automated material handling equipment has largely increased globally across industries including automobile. There are many options when it comes to moving material within the supply chain from fully automated storage and retrieval systems to manual MHEs. With supply chains’ getting more and more integrated, customers are looking at these systems for heightened levels of efficiency.

MHE in the automobile industry
As a pioneer of the sharing economy, CHEP has created one of the world’s most sustainable share and reuse business model. This has caused a disruption in the automobile industry that spent Capex on owning and managing their packaging material. An innovative packaging solution from CHEP addresses the concerns on product handling and safety through the supply chain and has made us the supply chain partner for most of the OEMs in India.

Innovation is the change that unlocks new value and we, at CHEP, continuously work towards bringing innovative solutions at multiple levels of the diverse and complex supply chains of automobile companies in India.

Challenges faced in this industry
Material handling industry is growing at an unprecedented pace in the Indian market. The high growth in the Indian economy has resulted in a significant rise in the volume of freight traffic moved. Present and future growth potential of the Indian logistics sector is regarded as one of the most attractive factor.

Despite this growth potential, the Indian logistics sector remains stalled in several complexities, which includes fragmentation, disjointed nature of logistics chain and non-standard sizes of trucks, handling equipment, and racks and pallets in the supply chain. Standardisation, mechanisation, automation and innovation are central to addressing these growing complexities.
To migrate towards modern material handling practices, the industry requires the adoption of a number of supply chain standards for material handling equipment, relating to systems, racking, pallets, packaging materials, transport and more.

Adopting Industry 4.0
With the fourth industrial revolution, the manufacturing industry is also moving towards a more digitised, automated, agile and efficient operation and there is no better example of this than in the supply chain network. Today’s consumers, who use digital updates, expect real-time information. We, at CHEP, are combining physical platforms with Internet of Things technologies through BXB digital to go beyond traditional boundaries and provide a more connected, intelligent and efficient supply chain. We are taking meaningful steps towards identifying the role technology can play in improving the efficiency of our own operations as well as providing richer customer insights throughout the supply chain.

Authored by
Stavros Kazakos,
Country General Manager,
CHEP India