Ep. #12: Material Handling Solutions & Industry Trends

This episode of Right from the Source features Joe Ellisted, a customer relations representative with Right Height. And loading that logistics professionals experience. You're listening to right from the source. Expert insights on safety, security, and you can see. Energy saving. And in the Your industrial or commercial physical. And on today's episode we've got with us, we're going to be able to do that.

Joe Ellisad. Hi Joe. Hi, how you doing? So first Joe, uh tell us your title. Uh how long you've been with Right Height and maybe a little background about your career. Sure. I've been with Right Height now for just over seven and a half years. Uh the first four years or so was with the marketing department. with the high speed doors division. Um and then in the last three, three and a half years I've been a

Customer relations representative, primarily working with our our flying program at at right height. Very cool. So uh any hobbies, passions outside of of work, Joe? You know, it's funny, the the the job that I do with right height with this flying program is to you know, entertaining customers and a lot of the things that we do is we go to ball games and we'll go to Hunting and fishing and those are exactly my hobbies. Um fishing with brothers and and my father and some family friends.

hunting in the fall. Deer hunting, pheasant hunting, stuff like that. But uh and then obviously I'm a big sports enthusiast with the uh the local teams, Green Bay Packers, Milwaukee Bucks, uh Brewers, Badgers. So um those are my big big hobbies there. All right. Well let's get into today's topic and we're gonna be talking a lot about material handling solutions.

and uh trends that are going on in the materials handling industry. First off here, the material handling operations seem to be getting more and more advanced all the time, from rise of robotics and AGVs. To the growth of three PLs and Amazon sized warehouses. Can you tell the listeners a little bit about some of the trends in material handling that you're seeing? Well when we talk about the Amazon effect, you y you talk about the issue that comes to uh mind as far as consumers want goods.

In their hands right away. You know, you order something from Amazon, the Amazon app, or from anywhere, really, any um retailer, you're expecting now free delivery, you're expecting that product to get to you as soon as possible. So in today's world, the expectation is get consumers' goods into their hands as soon as possible. And so with that, you're starting to see distribution centers

having to work faster, more efficient, but also trying to be as safe as possible. And so a lot of the things that we're seeing is uh bigger buildings. And we're also seeing more automation used. So uh robotics for again these fulfillment setters. Which does help a lot of the takeaway as far as human error. Mm-hmm. Um, but also a little bit more efficient in getting those goods into the trailers and out to the consumers, you know, for these uh these delivery centers to get it out to the consumer.

So you mentioned uh more robotics being involved. Uh what is a robotic and human interaction like? Does that happen? Is that is that a challenge that you're seeing and and what other types of challenges

Are you seeing as these warehouses get larger, these distribution centers get larger and those consumer expectations continue to rise? Well when you talk about the as far as the buildings getting larger, I mean the average from five to seven in the last five to seven years These buildings are getting bigger from anywhere from a hundred and eight thousand to one hundred and nine thousand square feet. And then an increased average height of

you know, three to four feet. And so the challenge is is making sure that the building sizes or the buildings are designed at the loading dock to handle the loads and handle the movement of these robotics going into these trailers. So at the loading dock, uh the moment that that trailer backs up to the building, the the truck should be properly restrained. to the building. The sectional door uh should open.

And the dock levers should be placed into the trailer bed for reliable and efficient loading, you know, or unloading those goods as as fast as possible. Inside of the plant, uh, what kinds of things are you seeing? Especially as, you know, buildings are are getting larger and and taller. Are there any uh things that um that you're seeing in that respect?

Well, with robotics specifically in the manufacturing side of things, uh I think what if our listeners know or um Jeff Johnston was in talking about a little bit of the robotics and the machine guardian. And so with robotics you have anything from a stretch welding machine to automation or as far as welding goes. And so we need to protect those as far as right height is concerned. Uh we need to have that motion or that movement protected. You know, OSHA real general OSHA requirement says

Anything that moves in an automated process shall be guarded. And so what we're using is a a lot of different physical barriers. uh to be able to guard those those processes that are happening. So some real specific doors to be able to be a physical barrier to those automated processes. We're using some fencing, some some welding guards and products like that to help reduce.

You mentioned earlier that uh you've got experience now in the flying program working alongside Walt. What are some things that you're telling customers as they're coming in during flying programs? Well, with the Fly In program, you know, one thing that that we're hearing at least from from customers when they're coming in is that they don't know what they don't know, right? So when they come into the the program, you know, back in the day

For our salespeople to go out and show the customers what our product is doing in a real life situation, going over to a neighboring facility and seeing what the process they're doing as far as how it kinda compares to what they're doing, those days are kinda gone. security is getting a lot more beefed up or th there's uh places that aren't allowing other people from coming in and seeing their processes just from a safety and a security standpoint.

But the biggest thing is you gotta be able to see what else is out there. And so a way to do that is going to these trade shows. There's a lot of different material handling trade shows that we're a part of. But you know, a lot of these customers of ours that are coming in They are just they're working. I mean they're they're first shift, second shift and then and third shift sometimes.

where they are just consistently having to be at their facility. They're not able to get out to a Chicago or Las Vegas or or an Atlanta to be able to see some of these big material handling shows. So another way to do that, which brings in the fly-in program, is to come in and see this stuff firsthand in a controlled environment. You know, I always joke it's a some of the product.

uh we have are just in a carpeted wallpaper showroom but then we also have another facility where we're actually being able to show them in a warehouse setting. So a real life situation where we're able to do that and and again that controlled environment is a big deal because

these consumers or these customers of ours at least, they're really trying to figure out what would work best. Mm-hmm. And that's where the warehouse in that controlled environment comes into play, where we can show them hands on push buttons. uh take pictures, all that good stuff to to uh to see this loading dock and door equipment and um they're always seeing something new. We're always coming out with something new

you know, yearly, month sometimes monthly we have something new. So even if we have a customer that comes in Two or three years after their last visit, they're gonna see something new for sure. And it it's such a wide breadth of products too. I mean, you mentioned the loading dock and there's so many different pieces of equipment.

that work at the loading dock and then implant you got everything from the doors and fans to curtain walls. So I mean it's just such a wide breadth that a a customer can just come in and see all this stuff in a in a real live situation. Yeah, you know it

It's funny, I with the marketing department, you know, uh three, four years ago when I was working with them, the I think the struggle that we had as far as marketing was trying to figure out what our consumers are looking for when they're looking for specific high speed doors or or looking for specific dock levelers or dock locks. You know, the the dock lock always gets confused with You know, that's just a dock lock and and it may not be our

vehicle restraint might not be the actual right height dock lock. It it might be, you know, a competitor's dock lock, which a calling dock lock, but it's actually a truck restraint or vehicle restraint with a different name. Again, you know, our brand name has just we've always been out there since nineteen eighty.

And so people are just used to calling it it's much easier than saying it, you know, a rotating hook vehicle restraint where we've got a a dock lock is just easier to say. So it's always this the struggle of trying to have um the right terms.

you know, Google AdWords and and setting up all that SEO as you well know to figure out what our customers are looking for. And sometimes they just they may know what they're looking for, but a lot of times that's where our uh distribution network comes in to say Uh listen, why don't we not only talk about this stuff at your facility and here's what I got, but also let's let's go in to Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

and and see this stuff firsthand where we can get a little bit of an education um so that we know what we're talking about. We're on that same page when they're trying to look for something that would be the solution to the issues that they're having in their facility.

Going back to material handling from a a general view, anything else that you're seeing from customers in terms of what they're looking to do? I mean, obviously it seems like efficiency is way up there. Um you've touched on safety a little bit. Are are there other safety concerns? A couple years ago, OSHA came out with a new regulation as far as fall off protection.

and making sure that no pedestrian or forklift is falling off um what I call a four foot cliff. You know, anything over forty eight inches must be properly protected. And so they put out a new regulation in two thousand seventeen to say you must protect anything any pedestrian from slips, trips, and falls. And to do that, especially at the loading dock, where where generally the

average height for these loading docks is around forty eight inches or that four feet. Uh, we need to have that properly protected. Now, could be a sectional door if you're a closed door policy, making sure that that door is closed at all times, but for those places down south or uh places where they just need to get some fresh air. You know, right now here in Wisconsin it's, you know, forty degrees or so, but they may

be a some kind of metal fabricating facility where it might be a little bit warmer in their facility. So they want to get some fresh air in there. If they keep that door open, we gotta make sure we have the loading dock protected so that people aren't falling off that four foot cliff. So Yeah, no thanks. No, absolutely not. Um, especially being in a forklift that weighs five thousand pounds. That's a

That's a far, far fall um being in something like that. So what we're doing is we're making sure that um our pedestrians and our forklifts are protected with some guardrailing systems um that we just came out with that that checks every single box.

from a OSHA standpoint. And uh that's how a lot of our products are developed, making sure that we're first and foremost protecting our employees at you know, but uh specifically at the loading dock for right height's sake, we're we're making sure that uh No one's falling off that four foot cliff. Love to hear about some other uh products maybe that Right Height is coming out with that can help uh really mitigate these uh dangers and and make loading docks and and implant safety.

really more more effective. The one that I was kind of leaning to before was a a product called Doc Guardian XL that that we've we've adjusted to again. make sure that we're checking all those boxes that OSHA has put down for for the requirements that they have, you know, at the certain uh it's gotta be a specific height and it it can't take a a a vertical movement so many inches. So we're putting that into place.

Um some other things that we're doing from a from a product standpoint with right height would be safety intersection. Right. We wanna make sure that uh when pedestrians and forkless or forkless and forkless are coming to an intersection We make sure that we're giving them traffic safety using LED lights and motion sensors.

um and a unit at that intersection to give you a warning that hey either someone's coming to that intersection or there's two or more people coming to that intersection giving you warning signs, giving you lights. Um we're tying in a lot of the blue light policy with our product. blue light policy would be using blue lights on forklifts, making sure that, you know, when a when a forklift is coming around the corner

They need to be warned. They they being forklift drivers or pedestrians, uh making sure that When they see that blue light, they are aware that a forklift is coming around the corner. So we're using that within some of our products to make sure that uh it ties into that.

Almost like a self training. You know, these forklift drivers have been trained that when they see or pedestrians, employees in these facilities have been trained to when they see this blue light to look around and be aware, stop, whatever it is. We're using that and uh incorporating that into our product. So that We're giving them again that warning. You know, I always joke with our customers. I ask'em, Are you using the the half moons? You know, the the the mirror ball.

Right. In the intersections that you see in in a lot of things, uh could be grocery stores or could be uh offices, anything like that. And I ask'em, Are you using'em for your intersections and your warehouses that are, you know, thirty feet high ceilings and everything? And they say yes and I I usually joke, what do you gotta do for them to work? And they usually give one or two answers or both and they either say, well, you either gotta look at them and you gotta clean them.

Mm and looking at them is becoming more and more challenging. because of, you know, the reports in your hand looking down or your phone in your hand looking down or you're just not looking up at all times to make sure that that a forklift may be coming around the corner or another person's coming in that intersection. So again, using Light. uh really gets their attention rather than just having this this mirror involved.

I mean I equate it to a a stoplight, really. Yeah, you know, and to me being a sports enthusiast, I I always say it looks like a scoreboard a little bit too where where it hangs up and comes down and it but it does. It really the LED lights, if that doesn't get your attention, the blue light on the floor will. So we got a blue light shining on the floor when two or more people come to that intersection.

making sure that we're we're warned properly and giving that I always say it's traffic safety, not traffic control. So that's where a little bit of that training comes in to make sure that our forklifts are, you know, w I get asked sometimes, well when did they know when to go? Well that's on that's on the people that are training these forklift drivers whether it's

four of'em coming to that four way stop, then it's the people on the right or they wave through. But at least we're warning them at the intersection so that they're not colliding at that

Right. So it's traffic safety. All right. Well, I think that just about does it with our plan questions here, Joe. Is there anything else that uh you feel like we might have missed that you wanted to cover on today's topic? Not really, I think we got through everything we wanted to get through. So hey, Joe, thanks for being on the podcast. We appreciate it. Yeah.

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