The Importance of Choosing a Material Handling Provider With Custom Solutions

Do you have custom products that you’re trying to handle with standard equipment? Are you tired of the efficiency losses and damaged equipment from handling products with inadequate equipment? If you answered yes, you may want to work with a material handling provider.

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With the paramount need for efficiency and product safety in the material handling industry, custom material handling equipment is a must for companies looking to remain competitive. These specialty pieces of equipment help companies handle unique materials that aren’t compatible with standard equipment to keep throughput high.

As you consider adding custom solutions to your business, you need to be aware of what custom solutions are available and why you might need them. You should also know the importance of custom solutions and the benefits that come with partnering with a top-quality material handling provider.

What Are Custom Solutions?

Custom material handling solutions are pieces of equipment designed for specific applications that off-the-shelf material handling equipment isn’t built for. They’re often designed with the help of a material handling provider who can adjust their standard products to the needs of your facility. Common customized material handling solutions include wire decks, lift tables, metal containers, wire containers, slip sheets, powered carts and pallet trucks.

When Do You Need a Custom Solution?

Sometimes, traditional material handling solutions don’t have what you need for peak efficiency in your facility. Some of the common reasons why companies look to custom solutions are that they need greater functionality, higher load ratings or larger dimensions than what is typically offered. When they can’t find a product that meets their requirements, they opt for custom solutions.

The following are common elements of material handling equipment that companies look to customize:

Dimensions: One of the primary ways you can customize material handling equipment is to change a product’s dimensions. The best material handling equipment providers can build custom solutions that feature personalized shapes and measurements. These custom sizes can help you better store, manipulate or handle products. Companies will often change the dimensions of bulk bins, slip sheets and pallets to better handle specialty materials.
Load capacity: At times, the load capacity of your material handling equipment may not be enough to complete a job successfully. If you try to overload your equipment, you run the risk of it failing and damaging products. An experienced material handling provider can work with you to modify your equipment to handle heavier loads and have more strength.
Functionality: Changes to the material handling equipment’s functionality can help you accomplish tasks specific to your company. You’ll often see powered carts, wire decks, roller skids and lift tables customized.

Importance of Custom Material Handling Solutions

If your company handles specialty materials and products, you likely need custom material handling solutions to fit your equipment to the appropriate dimensions, functionality and load capacity. You can get tailor-made equipment to assist every step of the handling process, from transporting raw materials to storing finished products.

With the right custom solutions, a warehouse handling unique materials can improve their productivity. These custom solutions can ensure the equipment has the load capacity to pick up and transport products from one location to another. They can also ensure storage solutions are built with the right dimensions for storing larger materials properly. Additionally, custom solutions can have the functionality you need to move items automatically or conduct a task in the handling process.

Customized material solutions built for specific applications can also improve efficiency and better protect your materials. For instance, when handling heavier materials, custom solutions designed with the appropriate load capacity can reduce the chances products are dropped or the equipment is harmed. This greater protection leads to lowered costs, as you don’t have to spend money on replacing damaged material or repairing the equipment.

By reducing the need to replace damaged material or repair damaged equipment, you can keep your production process running smoothly. Custom solutions reduce the number of production bottlenecks that can come from having to allocate staff for repairs. Reducing bottlenecks can improve your company’s ability to handle periods when it needs to process materials quickly.

Some of the primary reasons companies choose to invest in custom material handling equipment are to:

Reduce the chance of employee injuries: Giving your staff the opportunity to use custom solutions for custom products can significantly reduce their chances of injuries. These custom solutions can also lower the amount of manual labor staff have to complete to accomplish a task. By making it easier for employees to place or adjust materials, companies can reduce the amount of strain the equipment puts on employees and protect their well-being.
Protect materials from damage: You want to keep products and materials safe during the storage and transportation processes. Standard equipment does a great job keeping regular materials out of harm’s way, but it isn’t designed to handle materials that exceed its dimensions or load capacity. For example, storing items that are too large for a bin or pallet can open the item up to wear and tear. Custom-designed equipment can protect items from harm by featuring compatible load capacities and dimensions.
Improve staff satisfaction: Staff members are more likely to be happy when they have equipment that can efficiently handle their assigned tasks. Custom equipment can also reduce the amount of manual labor required to complete parts of the production process, which staff usually appreciate. When you invest in equipment designed to handle specific products, you free up your staff for other work and avoid bogging their days down with difficult tasks.
Improve efficiency: One of the top reasons companies choose to invest in specialty equipment is the increased efficiency they receive from using it. Since the equipment has been designed for particular products, it can move materials through your system quickly. You can also avoid the repair and replacement issues that come with using equipment for materials it’s not designed for. By handling equipment with greater speed and reducing the risks of equipment breakage, you improve the efficiency of your company significantly.

Why Choose Cherry’s Material Handling Equipment?

As you look for custom material handling equipment for your company, you need an organization you can trust and that has a track record of developing effective specialty equipment. Cherry’s has a long history of assisting companies who require customized material handling solutions. We offer custom and standard equipment to help you build out your facility with the best material handling equipment available today.

Benefits of Working With Cherry’s Material Handling Solutions

You can receive many benefits by working with the material handling experts at Cherry’s. Our solutions help companies improve their bottom line, increase their productivity, incorporate systems integration and keep their equipment running longer. We have many types of custom material handling equipment that carry several advantages to help you take your warehouse to the next level.

Below you can find the top benefits of investing in our custom equipment:

Easier system integration: An integrated material handling system aims to make all your equipment work together seamlessly. Customized equipment is perfect for a fully integrated system, as you can make sure its design fits the rest of your existing system. The extra functionality you can get from the equipment means you can incorporate features that help the machine collaborate with other pieces of equipment. Greater collaboration can significantly improve the efficiency of your system.
Longer equipment life cycle: Custom equipment from Cherry’s comes with the advantage of industry-leading durability. Our equipment is made with top-quality parts and is expertly designed to work well for a long time. Besides the durability of our custom equipment, our standard equipment will also last longer since you won’t use it for purposes it’s not designed for.
Higher quality equipment: One of the great benefits of working with Cherry’s is the amount of input you have on the quality of materials used. The equipment is built directly to your specifications. As you work with a custom equipment designer, you can select the level of quality of the different parts and materials you’re building the equipment with. Since you have such control over the equipment, you can swap out stock components with the highest quality parts if you prefer.
Safer features: While standard material handling equipment usually has safety features, you can get even more when you go with customized equipment. The custom features you can add to a piece of equipment can incorporate varying safety functions into its construction. You can also install ergonomic features into the material handling equipment to reduce strain on workers and lower the risk of developing repeated use musculoskeletal injuries.
Greater return on investment: Investing in custom material handling equipment can come with higher initial costs than standard equipment. In the long term, however, it can be one of the best investments you can make. Since standard equipment isn’t designed to handle specialty products, you lose out on efficiency and can possibly damage your equipment. Custom equipment improves your overall productivity, as you’ll be able to process material faster. You’ll get quicker throughput and enhance the capacity of your system.
Lower labor and overhead costs: When you use standard equipment for specialty products, you may run into higher labor costs from having to devote more manual labor to make the process work. A custom piece of equipment helps to cut down on the manual labor required to make it work, helping to reduce your facility’s labor costs.
Greater efficiency: Custom material handling equipment will improve the efficiency of your system. Since this equipment is designed specifically for unique products, it can move the products quickly through the system. They replace the inefficient standard equipment, speeding up your process a great deal. Implementing custom solutions also frees up your standard equipment to stick to what it’s best at, improving its productivity.

Examples of Custom Material Handling Equipment

Cherry’s regularly customizes a wide selection of material handling equipment to help companies find solutions that fit their needs exactly. Some of the most popular options can be found below:

Custom aluminum and plastic pallets: Pallets are crucial to the transportation and storage phases of material handling. You can choose between custom aluminum and plastic pallets. For custom plastic pallets, you can adjust the design features, durability, material composition, capacity and dimensions. With custom aluminum pallets, you can select the type of seam, dimensions, capacity and finish.
Custom pallet trucks: When you need to move materials around your workspace but the standard pallet trucks don’t fit your needs, custom pallet trucks are a must. You can customize your pallet truck’s size, colors, load capacity and more to build the best equipment for your warehouse.
Custom lift tables: In a warehouse, lift tables are often crucial to the material handling process. Standard lift tables sometimes don’t fit a facility’s layout or have the required capacity. Custom lift tables help to meet a company’s unique needs. Companies who choose to go with custom lift tables often want larger platforms, increased safety features, stainless steel frames, a higher lift capacity or greater portability.
Custom bulk bins: Storing materials and products safely is key to the success of material handling companies. Custom bulk bins make it much easier to store items and materials in your facility. If you choose a customized bulk container, you can adjust the color, add casters and extend the dimensions of the bin for greater capacity.
Custom powered carts: Powered carts make it easy for companies to transport supplies and products around a facility. Customized powered carts give companies the ability to increase or decrease platform dimensions and raise the working capacity. They also can be personalized to your company’s needs by adding in environmental accommodations, new technological features or multi-axis motorized enhancements.

Contact Cherry’s for Your Custom Material Handling Needs

Alongside our inventory of standard top-quality equipment, we also offer custom material handling equipment specially built for the needs of your business. With all the benefits you can receive by using specialty equipment, we’re sure we can help you improve your workflow and the efficiency of your material handling system. To give you an idea of our capabilities, check out some of our most commonly customized equipment types.

If you have any questions or want to begin the design process, contact us today. We’re equipped and ready to walk you through building the perfect piece of equipment for your company.