The future of moving and storing metal involves as little human interaction with the material as possible.In the service center sector, material handling success often hinges on handling the material as infrequently as possible. Efficiency is driven by either taking hands off of the metals or reducing the number of times material is on the move.
There are many ways companies manage and store inventory. Metal service centers handling long awkward loads have to manage difficult objects that are not easy to store. According to Paul Short, president, North America, Combilift, Greensboro, N.C., “It’s not a box like a pallet so generally they’re using high-bay cantilever racking. That’s getting the load off of a floor away from a traditional crane system where it’s stacked on top of each other and buried so there’s no overhead loads that are slung or swinging through a building.”
Immediate and easy access to every piece of material in the system is a must now, made possible by efficient material handling equipment married with warehouse management or ERP systems.
“We moved away from operators remembering where everything is and knowing where their overstock is to everything being in the correct place, managing their A,B,C so they have the fast movers close to where they need them and having their B materials and C materials higher up before they’re away from their stations. The philosophies and strategies around material storage and inventories improved. This is driven again by technology and the ability to analyze the fast movers, pick times and optimize that warehouse layout to make sure that you’re delivering what you need for your customers,” Short adds.
In addition, Stefan Dolipski, vice president, KASTO, Export, Pa., states that in an automatic setup, you have everything run through warehouse management software or a computer. “We have our own software suite which has all those items which are related to warehousing. Our material or inventory is always cleaned up and you don’t have many remnant pieces. With the software packages that are available, you can do several things such as search for certain material and arrival dates, just to name a few.
“Another thing that an automatic system works quite well with is that you have usually integrated scales which means every single time that a cassette that contains the material moves past the station, you get a weight result. This means every time you move the material you get inventory feedback. That’s why the automation side of things helps the whole package, the whole company, to work as well as possible,” Dolipski says.
Lauren McCallin, COO, Steel Storage Systems, Inc., Commerce City, Colo., says there was a scare with COVID in the supply chain when companies were starting to do the just-in-time inventory practice. Companies are now getting smarter about that, getting closer to the just-in-time practice but with a comfortable buffer.
“Certainly optimizing layout and space, and accessibility is key to the material as well. You can have a lot of storage density, a lot of variety, but if you can’t access it quickly, you’re wasting money. The more advanced data analytics and forecasting tools can predict trends and tell you exactly when you’re going to need something and, based on historical data, when you should get it,” she says.
David Veldung, president, Fehr Warehouse Solutions, Charlotte, N.C., says that solutions such as ASRS allow for accurate, real-time, inventory tracking and retrieval. Also, Management Systems integrated with ASRS improve stock visibility and streamline replenishment processes with dual-way communication to ERP systems. Last, by using vertical space and compact storage designs, companies can maximize their facility footprint, especially crucial for high-density storage environments. “We can save up to 60 to 70 percent of the floor space compared to a side loader system,” he says.
However, too many companies still have approached this as a manual process. It’s a non-value-added process so they keep it manual with the expectation that it’s easy to accomplish.
Kim Hindle, chief product officer, CareGo Tek, Burlington, Ontario, says what her clients tend to find out is that managing inventory and maximizing that storage capacity are very complicated processes that require a lot of thought and consideration. “The reality is a crane operator, when we’re dealing with offloading trucks, is going to find the first and easiest place to put something down and get on with the next thing. They’re not looking to optimize that space and it’s quite a complex endeavor given the diversity of sizes and shapes that we’re dealing with.”
Additionally, Hindle says, many companies in the space still use a manual hand count process and so they’re counting all of their inventory individually, whereas if it’s automated, every piece and its location is known. When you compare a manual storage area with an automated counterpart, the automated counterpart is able to very quickly view all of the inventory via dashboard and they can satisfy that inventory audit request with the click of mouse instead of painstakingly going out there and counting it or finding it.
A manual approach usually leaves vast amounts of space utilized in an inefficient manner. It also increases the chances for unsafe equipment usage. “They don’t take advantage of the vertical space for a multitude of reasons. Obviously, in an automated environment, it not only moves the product safely but it maximizes the storage density. At the same time, it keeps all of the product available for whatever is the next step in the process which is what everybody really cares about – how do I get it processed faster and out the door faster,” Hindle adds.
Veldung says the biggest trends in moving and storing metal in service centers are automation and robotics, which are part of a rapid shift toward fully automated solutions, including ASRS and automatic picking robots to streamline warehouse operations.
“Automating, from our perspective in overhead cranes, is a big trend as we’re seeing more and more of that either fully automated, semi-automated or getting the cranes built automation-ready to be done in the future,” says Ron Piso sales manager for G.W. Becker Inc., Hermitage, Pa.
Similarly, Dolipski agrees that the biggest trends would be the move to automated autonomous setups, unmanned operations that you don’t have hands-on the product anymore.
“What we have found in recent years is the impact of COVID-19 on the global supply chains, especially labor, has had a significant impact on the metals market and their desire to automate that supply chain,” Hindle states.
While operators are still cautious, the advancements in automation of material handling are so established in other markets the believe they can confidently take a leap up in terms of capabilities. “Where it’s a little bit trickier is finding somebody with knowledge of how to apply all of that automation of material handling in heavier goods and materials and specifically around how to store these heavier materials within the storage end of our metals facilities so that’s the challenge but the opportunity is significant,” Hindle adds.
Likewise, McCallin says automation and robotics alleviate labor shortages and increase productivity. Automated guided vehicles and automated storage and retrieval systems are also big trends. “I also have enhanced safety features limiting the human interface with the equipment and hazardous environments, AI and machine learning for predicting trends and planning as well.”
Moreover, Short states that while handling heavy and oversized loads safely and efficiently has always been important, it is definitely a growing priority as everyone wants to keep operators safe from any areas where there can be incidents. And there’s a lot more technology to make that operator’s job safer.
“The other trend and other challenges that we see in service centers is obviously a labor force to do these roles, so having a comfortable piece of equipment or a piece of equipment that makes their role easier, safer and more enjoyable are the trends that we’re seeing to get people more involved in,” Short says.
“We do that with a number of pieces of our equipment whether it’s the Combilift GTE or C series or competitive Straddle Carrier (Combi-SC). Rather than working at height on a trailer with someone operating a forklift and another person placing the dunnage, we could do it in 15 minutes, placing a full load of steel beams on a flatbed. The trends from that in terms of safety and efficiency leads to more automation and autonomous vehicles.”
Also, there have been many advances in smart computing. Hindle states there are additional use of sensors, different methods of data collection, AI, machine learning, all of which revolutionize what is possible within the automation space and some of the challenges that are specific to metals. AI vision allows you to do some pretty unique things in terms of finding those products, locating them, positioning them and stacking them.
“The only thing we’re finding is our customers are a lot more comfortable with A to B movements, a simple highly repeatable movement with a variable product. They are a lot more comfortable with that type of automation whereas they tend to be a little bit more cautious about taking all of these multiple shapes and sizes and putting them into a storage area and dealing with that. The irony is it’s those densely populated, highly variable storage areas that are actually the least safe parts of our facilities. The goal would be really to operate the material handling in those areas because that takes the personnel out of harm’s way so that’s the challenge,” Hindle adds.
Further, McCallin says, there’s a greater connection between IT and OT allowing multi-process integration and real time visibility and improved throughput as a result. “Companies can have their automated storage and retrieval system, they can have different saws, different conveyors that will move material and route it to a certain process. And all of this data is being collected on all of this equipment, moving material, processing material and order filling.”
Meanwhile, challenges still affect the space. Piso says we are still living heavily in the supply chain bumps that started in COVID. “A lot of our vendors are still struggling with certain aspects of their supply chain which affects our supply chain because they’re part of it so we’re having those challenges every day.”
However, while nothing has changed from a quality standpoint, reliability on the supply chain has been a huge hurdle. “I will say that from the raw material standpoint, steel and things of that nature have definitely rebounded, but its motors and chips – something that has a technology aspect to it – that is still a struggle,” Piso adds.
But the No. 1 challenge, Dolipski says, would be manpower, despite material handling being a relatively simple task. You don’t find people that want to do it day in and day out. The turnover rate is very high for a lot of the steel service centers so that’s where they kind of look at what they can do.
“The other thing is with the material cost going up in price, everything that you have, the steel prices going up consistently and increasing, the cost of a damaged part, of a miscut part with a wrong-delivered item, a wrong-inventoried item, those costs are becoming more of a burden on a company. And safety may be actually the highest priority for a lot of the companies out there. You want to remove the need for somebody to go down an aisle with a side loader to remove material, you want to remove the need for a crane to be running over bundles of steel, and people having to crawl on top of bundles.”
Veldung agrees, saying labor shortages are one of the biggest concerns, making automation a key priority for many warehouses. Space optimization is also important as many facilities are struggling to make the best use of limited space, particularly in urban environments.
Hindle concurs that labor is a big issue. She says the biggest obstacle in the metals market is finding someone who wants to run a crane. It’s a dangerous environment. The pay is typically the lowest in a metal facility or a plant and so ideally the goal would be to eliminate the challenge of labor in the lowest-paid position and move the product around in a facility in a manner that’s as automated as possible.
“The challenge is material handling is often seen as this non-value added process that is tacked alongside the value-added, so many companies are very reluctant to spend money on automation in a non-value-added space. But by having your cheapest, highest turnover labor being responsible for making sure that your products are ready for your truck shipments or for your processing lines, you end up just throwing labor at it which is the one thing you don’t have. It’s kind of a Catch-22 situation.”
Hindle adds that the other hurdle that they find coming up is that typically these material handling projects are competing for capital with other value-added processes. “They go through the same ROI or IRR type justifications and are competing for that money, but what we’re finding is with a lot of our clients that the desire to automate material handling is more of a cost of doing business as labor becomes scarcer and less willing to do those particular jobs. It’s a big issue.”
Finally, McCallin says that the most common safety concerns include picking material by hand and hazards associated with material on the floor, operator error and driving of forklifts and other equipment. A lot of companies don’t even want people touching the material at all, which is a different story than even 20 years ago. Additionally, forklifts and other equipment can pose collision risks in high-traffic areas and repetitive motions and poor ergonomics in traditional setups can cause long-term health issues for workers.
Hindle says ultimately there are a lot of safety concerns in a manual environment. Anywhere you have moving parts, there are always safety. concerns. Unfortunately in the metals industry, most fatalities and many of the incidents, are associated with material handling and moving vehicles or they’re associated with a combination of material handling and individuals being within those dense storage areas.
“Now the good news is for material handling when you automate these environments, they have to be safeguarded. No one is allowed in there and so they are interlocked with safety gates. If you are required to go into that area, all moving parts would cease,” Veldung says.
“We have seen a significant trend over the last two to four years of customers implementing more safety components in their own facilities that our cranes need to match up on such as lifelines and tie-off points and are not able to have access to certain moving parts of the crane. So safety has become, should have always been, but it’s more of a trend and it’s going to be here to stay. We definitely have seen a significant uptick in safety aspects as we build our cranes and then work on upgrading cranes that are existing in our customers’ facilities, upgrading them to meet their new safety requirements,” Piso concludes.
[Caption:] Using all of the vertical space in a warehouse is crucial to optimizing your facility. (Photo courtesy Fehr)