The Mheda Journal

I was on vacation for a few days last week and spent some time cruising around Southern California. I had been there before but always had a destination and a reason in mind, and never really took any time to explore beyond my immediate destination.

This time, though, I had some free time to relax and soak it all in. Looking back on it, it’s amazing how much material handling I saw, really in every way. Traveling around Long Beach, i saw the port filled with huge barges loaded with hundreds of shipping containers. I saw cranes and hoists being used to unload those ships.

I saw forklifts in action, at every size business, from a tattoo parlor in Venice Beach using a truck to unload what looked to be large ink canisters, to the Hollywood Walk of Fame using one to haul some new granite for a new sidewalk star (I think it was Russell Crowe’s), to a shipyard in San Diego.

I saw industrial storage rack in the place where we picked up our rental car, and I saw conveyors both at the airport and at a cruise ship boarding station we rode our bikes past.

Most people don’t know it, but material handling is everywhere! Making that awareness more prevalent is the purpose of MHEDA’s Industry Advocacy committee, and the good news is, they have a lot of material to work with. Even on vacation, I can’t escape it!

To those of us who spent last night watching TCU play Boise State in the Fiesta Bowl, we made the wrong decision. Airing at the same time on ABC was a new reality show, Conveyor Belt of Love. Think of it as speed dating meets material handling.

A series of single men rode a conveyor belt to the middle of a stage, where their dating worthiness was judged by five single ladies. The women could ask questions of the men and elect to go on a date or let them pass on the conveyor and out of the way forever.

Had I known about this sooner, there is no doubt that I would have penciled this in as must-see tv and definitely would have alerted you to it in this space. As it is, we’ll each have to settle for this clip.

I’m not much for “reality” shows, particularly reality dating shows, and my official review of this one is that it’s about as good as you’d expect. But, hey, whatever gets material handling out into the mainstream, right?

For now, this was a one-time special show made to conicide with the premiere of the new season of The Bachelor. That’s probably enough.

A colleague of mine forwarded me this interesting story yesterday. Apparently, AmbaFlex, a manufacturer of conveyors and conveyor components, won a lawsuit in a Shanghai court to stop a Chinese company from producing copycat conveyor equipment. The lawsuit has been pending for more than a year, and the judgment was handed down on December 2. According to the AmbaFlex Web site:

By Judgment of 2 December 2009, the Shanghai Civil People’s Court of China ordered local Cabax to stop manufacturing the infringing Spiral Conveyor and to pay damage compensation.

The perception that one cannot put a hold on copies of Western equipment by local Chinese manufacturers has been proven to be untrue. Over the last years and supported by the WTO membership of China, the Chinese law became more open for foreign companies to successfully file their complaints relating to patent infringements.

Congrats to AmbaFlex on protecting its patent. This is a practical example of what’s been said in the industry for a long time: competition is everywhere, and they’ll try everything to survive! Especially in this down economy. It will be interesting to see how this plays out going foward.

Last year at this time, MHEDA distributors were in much the same boat as they are now. They wanted to be optimistic about where business would be next year, but they were hesitant. That’s much the same this year. In our annual Industry Forecast that will be mailed out in print on January 15, 68% of MHEDA member distributors interviewed anticipate a sales increase in 2010. Reasons ranged from product diversity to increased marketing to “It can’t get much worse.”

That’s slightly more than double last year’s rate, when MHEDA members were bracing for the downturn and only 32% were anticipating increases.

For more information on the 2010 forecast, read The MHEDA Journal Online on January 15.

Remember those days when getting Legos for Christmas was about the most exciting thing in the world? Well, for some elementary school students in Minnesota, legos under the tree this year would be even more of a bonus. You see, these students are participating in the Lego robotics competition, trying to design a robotic forklift made of legos to meet the competition’s parameters.

Read the article in the Stillwater Gazette for an article and video with more deatils.

The latest issue of The MHEDA Connection, MHEDA’s semi-monthly newsletter, is due out in e-mail inboxes tomorrow, December 15. Topping this issue’s in-depth breaking news is an item out of Jonesboro, AR, and Hytrol Conveyor Company. Industry stalwart Bill Hawthorne, Hytrol’s VP of sales, is retiring at the end of the year. He will stay on as a consultant through 2010.

I want to give Bill special mention in this space because he was one of the first people I ever met in the material handling industry. Shortly after I joined the MHEDA team in 2003, I attended NA2004 in Cleveland. It was there that I met Bill and other Hytrol employees. We had a long discussion about the industry, and he always remembered me after that. I’m sure he meets a lot of people every day, so for a virtual rookie in the industry to receive that kind of attention was definitely appreciated. Thanks, Bill, for being a great resource over the years. Best of luck in your retirement. 

See my colleague’s blog or read the December 15 issue of The MHEDA Connection for more details. (If you’re not receiving it and would like to, let me know and we’ll add you to the list.)

Price comparison just got a little bit easier, and just in time for the holiday shopping season. A group of enterprising students at the Missouri University of Science and Technology developed an iPhone app that turns the handheld device into a bar code scanner. According to an article on mystateline.com:

The students say they looked at other products designed to read the Universal Product Code attached to virtually every product and discovered most couldn’t read all available code types.

The students’ app, called Barcodescan, not only reads all types of UPC codes but it scours the Internet for prices, product reviews and other information about the product.

The free program for iPhone users has been downloaded more than a quarter-million times. The final, more feature-rich version is currently available for 99-cents on the iPhone app store or on iTunes.

Material handling is all about creating efficiencies, and these students have that concept in mind. It’s nice to see some young minds getting into the spirit. For more information, see the November 25 headlines on www.wikimheda.org.

I was looking at MHEDA’s Web site today and noticed an announcement there that says only 4 booths remain for next year’s Exhibitors’ Showcase at the Annual Convention next May in Marco Island, FL. So if you’re planning to exhibit a booth and have not yet registered, act now! Call the MHEDA office at 847-680-3500 and let them know!

As I prepare our Annual Industry Forecast article (which will be released in print and online on January 15), I’ve been talking to a host of material handling equipment distributors. Even though they aren’t predicting a robust recovery, they have outlined a few places where they see opportunity.

Scott Lee, president of engineered systems integrator Conveyor Solutions (Schaumburg, IL) and a director on the MHEDA Board, outlined some when I spoke to him a few days ago. In talking about some recent quoting and a general pick-up in activity, he said:

“It’s weird out there because it’s not these big, new projects where people are expanding. It is actually a lot of consolidation work that companies are doing to stay afloat and reduce resources. They’re reducing the number of facilities, so it creates opportunities for us to help them. Plus, I also think it’s a lot of end-of-the-year money too. People who may not have done as bad as they planned to are saying, ‘Let’s consolidate these two buildings and get this done for next year.’”

Scott didn’t make a solid prediction for next year, but was glad to report an uptick in business lately. As I hash through more information and distributor comments, I’ll keep posting updates of what I learn.

Any of you out there with any predictions for next year, feel free to leave a comment and let me know!

Finally, that moment we’ve all been waiting for…the new issue of The MHEDA Journal is now available online. As is typical with our Fall issues, the Fourth Quarter 2009 issue is all about Distributor-Manufacturer Relationships.

Even in a down market, MHEDA Members were still able to collaborate for successful sales. We were able to contact 18 distributors about some of their best sales of the year. If you didn’t get a chance to participate, that’s OK. We also run Sales Success Stories throughout the year in The MHEDA Connection newsletter, so feel free to give us a call to try to get a story in.

Another major highlight of this issue is a series called “Hitting The Mark,” where 12 individual manufacturers and distributors describe the steps to take to get your M-D relationships one rung closer to perfection.

There’s a lot more in this issue, so take a few minutes to hop over to www.themhedajournal.org and take a look. Let me know what you think!