Material handling

In English, material handling – materials handling in British usage – refers to the movement, protection, storage and control of material along its whole route through production, warehousing and distribution. Forklift trucks, racking, conveyors and cranes belong to it just as the lifting aid at the workstation does.

In German industry the borrowed word “Materialhandling” is often used more narrowly: for handling material at the workstation, that is picking up, transferring and setting down. Anyone reading the term in an enquiry from a German-speaking company should clarify which meaning is intended.

Compared with workpiece handling, material handling is coarser: it concerns raw material, semi-finished products, packs and unit loads that have to get from A to B – not the precise insertion of a component into a fixture.

Compared with conveyor technology it is broader because it includes storage and protection. And compared with intralogistics, the narrower sense lacks the control and information level. In its wide English sense, however, it largely coincides with what German-speaking industry calls intralogistics.

For material handling at an individual station, four details count: the weight of the heaviest unit, its dimensions and how it can be gripped, the frequency, and the heights of pick-up and set-down.

Raw material is often more awkward than the finished part. Sacks yield, bars are long, panels are large, drums are round. The gripper therefore decides whether a device gets used: a device that carries the weight but needs two more hand movements to attach than carrying by hand does will be left standing in the corner.

Misunderstandings arise mainly from the words.