A MINISTER FOR MATERIALS HANDLING!
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International Conference
Reported by JOHN DARKER, AMBIN IN a visionary appraisal of the contribution that modern materials handling techniques can make to the improvement of the quality of life a speaker at the fourth international conference of the Institute of Materials Handling last weekend urged that materials handling in industry should be elevated to Ministerial rank. The speaker was Mr. Noel R. Bewley, managing director of Mechanical Handling Ltd., of Melbourne, Australia, and the remark was one of many highly stimulating and provocative thoughts contained in his paper, "Men for Materials Handling Systems".
Altogether, 16 specialist papers were read, four to each of four panels, and though delegates were faced with the difficult choice of which particular offering to sample, copies of most of the papers were subsequently made available.
A reference to lorry design was made by Mr. P. Falconer, FRIBA in his paper. "Criteria for the Design of Integrated Warehouses". The design of delivery vehicles, believes Mr. Falconer, is at the point where the car was before the first world war. "Most trades delivering low value and bulky articles require a low deck, side loading and no wheel arches. A low deck is of the greatest value in speeding up urban deliveries and French front-wheel-drive box vans with floor level only inches above street level are now being used in this country with considerable success."
Where empty returns are a problem, Mr. Falconer stresses the importance of side loading as it allows drivers to replace or palletize empties without rehandling them at every delivery point, and he favours strong lockable sliding doors.
Although he held that future delivery vehicles would probably have front wheel drive, small rear wheels and a deck only about 2 ft. above street level, Mr. Falconer conceded that with the standard flat deck lorry used for bulk delivery of palletized goods, deck height was not important, "though the time taken to sheet and desheet is. Equipment for performing this job mechanically within a minute or so, would appear to have a good future where there is sufficient height within the loading area for such an operation".
A paper by Captain M. Markussen, of Norconsult A.S., Oslo, contained some devastating criticisms of palletization techniques, particularly applied to surface transport. He contrasted the one ton per man hour productivity of freight handling by some transAtlantic shipping lines with the fantastic efficiency of loading and off loading of airfreight at Kennedy airport where (admittedly using sophisticated equipment) three men can load 90,000 lb in 20 minutes.
After describing the numerous types and sizes of pallets in use in England, Germany, Scandinavia and the U.S., Captain Markussen said that it was by no means unusual for goods to be transferred from pallet to pallet five or six times between shipper and receiver. "This situation is so ridiculous as to be almost beyond description."
The speaker favoured wing pallets, which are most easily slung with a pair of lifting bars; in his view all pallets should be built on the wing principle. It was also important that parcel-type loads should be built up with one or two inches of overhang, as this made for compact stowage in the ship hold, with less risk of damage through movement.
Captain Markussen favoured "through pallets" for the throughout movement of goods. These would not be returnable but, being robustly made, they could be shipped with a new load in another direction or sold as second-hand packing. He was highly sceptical of the much-vaunted virtues of containerization, for traffic flows across oceans rarely balanced and the frequent need for goods to be consolidatel was only one of many major disadvantages. There use, he felt, would be limited to door-to-door movements, special cargoes, liquid or powder cargo such as wine, glue, oil, flour, fertilizer, chemicals, cattle meal, sugar and so on, shipped to big consumers.
Like Mr. Falconer, Captain Markussen thought that lorries should be loaded from doors on both sides, as is now common with railcars. Rates for loading and off-loading with flat or side loading vehicles are appreciably cheaper than with tail-board loading, he said.
Road transport pre-eminent
In his thoughtful paper, "The Effect of Modern Distribution Methods on the Cost and Availability of Consumer Goods" Mr. N. C. Turner, of J. Sain. bury Ltd., stressed the extremely limited use of rail services made by his company. Apart from the movement of fresh beef from Scotland into London cold stores and into their Basingstoke depot, and other very minor uses, road transport was pre-eminent.
At warehouses, the unpredictable arrival of suppliers' vehicles often led to unavoidable delays in unloading. As regards distribution of goods ex warehouses to their shops, they were constrained by their policy of supplying fresh goods to shops daily, which involved a first delivery at around 7.30 a.m. This necessity limited the radius of action from the depot, and though they had plans, at some shops, to extend the delivery period into the shops, they were seldom able to deliver after 4.30 p.m. Because of this, they had given much thought to maximizing vehicle use by achieving the greatest possible reductions in terminal times at depots and shops.
Sainsbury's, said Mr. Turner, had now successfully adopted the Swedish system of roll pallet deliveries using a wooden base 27 in. x 32 in. fitted with castor; and with two lightweight metal sides held in position round the load by tough flexible bands. Such pallets were more conveniently handled by the staff at shops than others with which experiments had been made.
Rather surprisingly, said the speaker, "we can in general make very little economical use of the large articulated or semiarticulated van of maximum carrying capacity" and Sainsbury's optimize their transport costs by using 7-ton capacity fixed wheel vans. They also find it pays to operate a wholly refrigerated arrying mixed loads, as this simplifies journey patterns greatly, as no undesirable effect on those goods carried which may :quire to be refrigerated.
er outlining the human factors in the distribution system particular reference to warehousing staffs which were, he nduly "labour intensive", Mr. Turner said that Sainsbury's red a driver's performance by the quantity of goods he during the pay period. There were agreed running times for very standardized journeys, "and by relating pay under a simple bonus scheme to the number of journeys achieved by oup of drivers, we have maximized the total tonnage carried e have been able to effect certain economies in the utilization vehicle fleet".
:ause warehouse work could become extremely monotonous, 'urner stressed that the greater degree of precision which is uced into methods, as for example with certain automated yts, the less room there was for the exercise of personal judgment. "1 believe that wherever human work is involved, • articularly where there is a tendency for it to become .onous and dull, a careful balance has to be struck between quirements for maximum efficiency and economy in the ion of working methods and the necessity to use human as persons capable of exercising judgment over their actions wever limited a degree." There was also the need to build ig groups which organized themselves into a team.
en Mr. H. A. Ray, a National Officer of the TGWU spoke on Contributions of Trade Unions to Improved Materials ing", he stressed that when redeployment of labour was ed it was necessary to reach agreement or understanding le redeployment -would not react in a way that will appear detrimental to those so redeployed, and those who will be n employment".
safety aspect, too, could not be glossed over, for much ,nical handling equipment was potentially dangerous, 1, in fact, the accidents were relatively infrequent. Because of latter number of men employed, said Mr. Ray, the percentage idents appeared to be high. Certainly, many workers believed Us was so, and it was one of the tasks of the trade unions to ice them that the apparently high percentage of accidents less serious factor than appeared to be the case.
) much stress could not be placed on continued assurances magement that there was a secure base for the continued yment of the work force. Managers should not expect rs to accept too much in the way of changes in work patterns once. A compromise in the ideal arrangements desired by ;ement should still be accepted if it involved some genuine vement; often, when the workers became familiar with new s and procedures they would themselves press management e further steps towards efficiency.
'as also vital that realistic rates of pay should accompany any e from manual working methods to mechanically assisted 'The human beings with whom we have to deal have a brain pinions—unlike inanimate machines. The commodity they their labour, and it is the job of the trade unions to get the best Ile return for their members."
Ray said that trade unions had not opposed mechanization, some trade unionists had. "We have the difficult job in the and often have to coerce, educate and guide our people to : something we ourselves have perhaps accepted from the ployers sometimes say they would prefer to train younger Ir. Ray went on. "We disagree; we have to sell the idea to our and in this the co-operation of the older men is vital." It not be forgotten that in the introduction of mechanical ng procedures the trade unions were generally dealing with 'ers, not semi-skilled operatives. In the early stages only a ity of employees would obtain any tangible advantages from Meal handling. In the future, Mr. Ray thought that the 'er would not be the man who fetched and carried but the who fetched and carried economically.
Ray instanced the great interest of the trade unions in ng Boards. These were possibly -the best joint answer to
t problems, and their experience would be made available to tions of industry". ' Mr. Ray concluded his thoughtful address by announcing that the TGWU had recently set up an expertly staffed work study section and this was likely to have an increasing impact on the attitudes and responses of members throughout the country. There were immense possibilities of labour saving in the service and distribution industries. "Where the cost of labour outweighs the value of its product come to us and we will help."
Stimulating conclusion
To end this review of a well supported and very worthwhile conference, Mr. Bewley's paper, mentioned in the introductory paragraph, provides an appropriately stimulating conclusion. Mr. Bewley might well deserve the title of "The materials handling philosopher-, for his address was packed in equal measure with erudite quotations from world pioneers in mechanical handling and concrete examples of their pay-off in economic terms.
His experience in Australia over a number of years was that installations costing from $A200.00 to over $A3,000,000 almost without exception recovered their capital cost in 2 years or less. (Australian dollars are worth 8s. sterling.)
Mr. Bewley was quite confident that a properly applied materials handling system invariably justified borrowing for its purchase. Frequently, he said, technically and economically sound proposals have never matured due to poor presentation to Boards by management and/or equipment manufacturers.
Mr. Bewley was scathing in his views of certain designers and manufacturers of equipment for their lack of study of the human body and attention to the operator's comfort. "The majority of equipment designers completely ignore any reference to the size, shape, ability, fatigue and so on of the human body. How many drawing offices bother to sketch in the operator or have even a simple articulated plywood or cardboard model of an operator when designing this equipment? Probably not one in a hundred."
In a fascinating speculative section, Mr. Bewley reviewed the work of leading cyberneticists who hoped to replace human senseorgans with photo-electric cells or radar. The nervous system would probably be replaced by electronic rays, and muscles by mechanical power.
The speaker's views on some possibilities suggested by current scientific and technological developments were startling. He thought the use of motor trucks for deliveries of goods from factories and warehouses to stores in shopping centres a costly and inefficient method ripe for supercession! "Thought must be given to this .. . in the near future and the possibility of an underground belt conveyor, an aerial ropeway or an overhead monorail from a common dispatching station to the shopping centre must be considered."
He believed that in the not-too-distant future goods would be delivered by unmanned rockets, for the science of ballistics is so advanced that it would be a simple matter to calculate the trajectory arc of a freight carrying rocket, after which small retrorockets or a parachute would lower it to earth".
Helicopters, too, were praised for their increasing competitiveness for certain delivery operations, and the speaker thought that air-cushion vehicles, on land or water, appeared to be ideal for certain types of cranes, fork lift trucks and platform trucks.
The failure of modern industry to take more advantage of materials handling was "a failure of management" said Mr. Bewley. There was no effective mechanism for seeing that new knowledge gained in basic research was put to use, and this implied that private industry "can no longer be relied upon to make the necessary advances as fast as they must be made. Time has become the most pressing dimension in our lives. The traditional pressures of the market place seem no longer to act fast enough".
Mr. Bewley confessed that much in his paper was controversial. Hewas on a world tour, and had arrived that day from Russia and soon departed for the U.S. "If I tread on any toes I hope I'll be thousands of miles away before anyone realizes it!" For myself, I confess to being enthralled by a highly stimulating and original paper. From a long-haired intellectual it would have been unusually interesting: from a practical and successful expert in mechanical handling his words deserve to be weighed and weighed again.