£300,000,000—
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An Unproductive Overhead
TWENTY-FIVE per cent. of manhours were spent in handling matenials, at a cost of at least 000,000,000 a year for wages, said Mr. John M. Morris, in a paper read this week at the convention held in conjunction with the Mechanical Handling Exhibition, at Olympia.
He dealt with fork-lift trucks which, he said, embodied the individual functions of a crane, lift, tractor, locomotive and portable elevator.
An analysis of time spent in handling materials in a large engineering group, taken as a survey on 30,000,000 production mart-hours, showed a figure equal to 25 per cent. The organization concerned could be regarded as being exceptionally alert in the field of mechanized handling, so that the figure arrived at was a much lower percentage than that which obtained in many other undertak ings.
Labour's Antipathy Referring to the objections raised by dock labour to the introduction of mechanical aids, Mr. Morris said that this was partly responsible for some of the delay in proceeding with the recommendations contained in the working party's report on the turn-round of shipping in the U.K.
The use of fork-lift trucks would, in fact., make for more ships to unload, the . work being cleaner and less strenuous, thus improving labour conditions at the docks. The author, quoting figures, said that a Canadian 18-man docker gang handled 2,000 tons in 12 hours, which was equal to 166 tons per hour.
On a conservative comparison, said Mr. Morris, a 20-man British gang, without the aid of fork-lift equipment, and working at the comparatively high. rate for British ports of 20 tons per hour, would take 100 hours 4 or 12/ working days, to handle the same tonnage.
Pallet-load System
Nowhere had the fork-truck palletload system found greater acceptance than in the motor industry. Amongst other advantages, the system reduced loss by damage and theft.
It was not generally known that the fork-lift truck originated in this country, but its value as a time and labour-saver was not appreciated here. It was American enterprise which realized and developed its great potentialities.
The test requirements for wooden pallets, imposed by the American Naval Authorities, were as follows:—(1) Ability to bear a static load of 1,400 lb. for one month; (2) stability and simplicity of stacking; (3) must withstand shock• loading, when the pallet is carrying evenly distributed weight of 7,500 lb., the corner of the pallet being a8 lifted to a height of 2 ft. and suddenly dropped; (4) dropping unladen from a height of 10 ft. on to a concrete floor, once on each corner, then on the edge and on the flat and (5) resistance to fire. The materf.al-handling engineer, said Mr. Morris, would be increasingly recognized as fulfilling one of industry's most vital managerial functions. In the unceasing quest for low-cost production the savings which could be effected in the field of planned materials movement had tended to be overlooked. This could not continue, said Mr. Morris, and movement operation sheets for handling each item or unit load must take their place alongside production operation sheets.