How to increase performance & extend the life of your aging material handling system.

If your material handling system is having frequent breakdowns resuling in downtime, you can increase the performance of your conveyor or soration system with little capital investment.  An investment worth making that beats the alternative of system breakdowns wich equates to loss of productivity and a direct increase on your operating costs. 

Here are a few steps that can extend your investment  and the life of your system:

• Performance Audit:  In today's world, companies are often faced with increased requirements for productivity, accuracy and reliability, while at the same time contending with increasing labor expenses and/or staff reductions.  To manage this delicate balance, many warehouse and distribution companies are turning to W&H Systems for the expertise needed to audit their existing material handling systems.  This is an effective way of keeping your material handling system up to date and performing an audit every few years.  This helps you zero in productivity inefficiencies, evaluating such areas as picking, conveying and sorting rates.  W&H  will submit a final report detailing recommended adjustments helping you pinpoint and fix inefficiencies, realizing cost savings from improved productivity  rates and system performance.   To read more please see our Audit document.
• Preventive Maintenance:  is a schedule of planned maintenance actions aimed at the prevention of breakdowns and extending the life expectancy of your investment in these automated systems.  The primary goal of preventive maintenance is to protect your investment by preventing the failure of equipment before it actually occurs.  Regularly scheduled preventive maintenance can help you determine when components will fail so you can do corrective work on them before they breakdown.  Another benefit is that a properly tuned and maintained system consumes less energy.  To read more please see our Preventitive Maintenance document.
• Retrofitting:  can involve upgrading components, increasing speed/capacity or incorporating new technologies.  Retrofitting can boost efficienncy by 15-20% or more and enable your material handling systems to function beyond its initial capacity limits to satisfy  increased production demands.  The cost of retrofitting is often less than new equipment costs because of the re-use of existing equipment.  W&H Systems is one of few companies that enjoy and have the engineering skills to do this "dirty work" and deliver succesful results.
• Warehouse Control System:  At the same time, companies seeking to upgrade their material handling systems shuld consider adding a Warehouse Control System to enhance flexibility, performance and broaden access to real-time operatinal data.  W&H Sytems offers this as one of our product lines and its key capabilities include: relieving a customer h ost computer of managing a real-time material handling automation interface, maximizing systems throughput and performance and utilizing the most efficient methods for pallet, case and item routing.  To read more please see our Warehouse Control System document.