Is Materials Handling Dead?

I had the pleasure of sitting on a panel at the Materials Handling Short course at Georgia Tech this week. This course is the granddaddy of short courses, celebrating its 55 th year.

Dale Atkins, the course director, surprised us with the first question; “Is materials handling, as a profession, dying out?”

Several panelists were quick to admit that it doesn’t seem to get the attention that it once did. Since I have lived most of my life immersed in this discipline, I certainly didn’t want to admit that it might be on its last legs. So, I thought a while, trying to find an optimistic response.

It’s true that over the last 20 years, emphasis has been increasingly in the direction of logistics and the supply chain. The venerable Georgia Tech Short Course now splits its week with the Supply Chain Execution course. The Materials Handling Management Course that used to devote 2 full weeks to materials handling system design has been gone for more than 10 years. The Materials Handling Research Center at Georgia Tech has been absorbed by The Logistics Institute.

There is only so much room in the engineering curriculum, so logistics courses are pushing the materials handling design courses out of the way.

20 years ago when we designed MH systems for clients, we did it together with industrial engineers on their staff who were eager to learn the wonders of developing technologies. Today, many of those engineering positions have been eliminated in cost reduction moves and we are more likely to be interfacing with busy operations managers and logistics directors.

So, as I quickly reflected on the future of my beloved field, I thought that maybe it was right for logistics to be taking over. After all, the opportunity to reduce inventory and transportation costs seems much bigger than what could be achieved by reducing MH costs.

Somehow, materials handling got folded into the logistics tent, and not visa versa. We lost the name game – and with it, the discipline of systems design.

The materials handling equipment suppliers and integrators have stepped to the front, and do take on full systems design responsibility. But, they can’t help but carry a bias toward a capital intensive solution that supports their company’s business.

Don’t get me wrong, we desperately need the innovative product development and in-depth knowledge of their sales and engineering staffs. But, we also need an educated customer base that knows how to translate their own company’s business into materials handling requirements that can be compared with the capabilities of the diverse technologies available from the suppliers.

I think that the key to restoring the prominence of MH system design as a discipline is to recognize that the real pay-off is not in reducing MH costs, but in reducing the costs and increasing the capacity of the operations that the handling system serves.

Years and years ago, Frank Wier of Timken Bearings used to tell the students at the Materials Handling Management Course that his management never questioned the money that he wanted to spend on materials handling because every time that he spent some, total operating costs went down.

I hope that this doesn’t sound like a bunch of sour grapes. But, I love this field. And, when someone asks whether or not it is dying, I feel some pain.

No, Dale, materials handling system design is not dead, or dying. It is finding a fresh voice and emphasis as a vital element in making the promises of supply chain engineering a reality.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

James M. Apple, Jr. is a Director in The Progress Group. Prior to co-founding The Progress Group in 1991, he was a Partner with Coopers & Lybrand's SysteCon division. During 1992-1995 he served as a Senior Systems Advisor with Vanderlande Industries, a major conveyor and systems provider in Europe.

Jim is an internationally recognized thought leader in the area of facility design and integrated distribution systems. His contributions to the improvement of distribution practices have been recognized by his receipt of the prestigious Reed-Apple Award, which is given for lifetime contributions to the advancement of the material handling profession. Jim has also received the Institute of Industrial Engineers' Facilities Planning and Design Award. He has written numerous articles and handbook chapters on warehousing and logistics operations and is a popular speaker on logistics seminar and conference programs.

Prior to SysteCon, Jim worked as an Industrial Engineer with IBM, was Supervisor of Facilities Planning for the Oldsmobile Division of General Motors and was Executive Vice President for an automotive aftermarket parts supplier. He holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology.