Tips for Handling Raw Material

Handling raw material — especially raw food like meat, dairy, seafood and poultry — comes with a lot of responsibility. Incorrect handling can result in product loss, foodborne illnesses, extra expenses to your company and inefficient processes. Fortunately, there are many pieces of equipment available to help companies handle raw material more efficiently. There are also some standard practices and steps you can take to improve your raw material warehouse’s productivity and sanitation.

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How to Improve Productivity for Raw Material Handling

Your warehouse’s productivity is central to your success and keeps your company ahead of others in the industry. As you handle raw material, you should be able to identify areas in your workflow that need improvement. After finding inefficiency, you must address it appropriately, whether that means more staff training, new equipment and technology or better warehouse organization. Consider the following process to learn more about how to improve your warehouse’s efficiency when handling raw material:

1. Evaluate the State of Your Workflow

The first step to optimizing your warehouse’s productivity is evaluating your current workflow and analyzing areas in need of optimization. Your staff, equipment and processes are three of the primary areas you should evaluate, as they’re all important to a productive warehouse:

Staff: When you evaluate your staff’s ability, you should first ensure they have all been properly trained. Staff members who don’t know how to use equipment and handle raw material appropriately can lead to lost products, slowed processes and increased injuries. Check to see if you’ve set clear objectives staff can accomplish. It’s also essential you have a project manager to oversee key processes and ensure employees are following directions.
Equipment: Your equipment is crucial to the success of your company. If you don’t have the right equipment and technology for handling raw material, you’re likely to experience bottlenecks in the production process. Damaged equipment should be identified and repaired to ensure optimal production. You must also review the technology you rely on to see if there are tasks you could automate by updating your tech.
Processes: Map out your processes to evaluate if they’re functioning at an optimal level. Look for bottlenecks and pain points, and come up with possible solutions to solve challenges that slow your production.

2. Keep Technology and Processes Updated

With your existing workflow mapped out, it’s time to start improving processes that harm your company’s productivity. Technology should play a big role in this optimization. For example, automation technology can be integral in handling raw material. You can use it to reduce user error and increase the efficiency of your handling processes. Software can also assist with inventory management, helping you track raw materials and monitor their path through your processes.

You can also optimize processes by looking at old procedures that may have been developed before new equipment, technology or products were added to the warehouse. Check to see if there are tasks that are no longer necessary or if you still have workarounds in place from times when you were adding equipment.

3. Train Staff

If you identify your staff as an area needing improvement, you can train them to better handle your equipment and complete tasks more efficiently. Safety training is a top priority and can be a great place to start. Injuries can lead to workers’ compensation claims that cost your company a great deal of money. They can also incapacitate staff while they recover, leading to a reduced labor force.

Another safety element to consider in training is the high level of sanitation required in raw material handling. If staff members don’t follow sanitation requirements, food products may be at risk of contamination. You can also schedule sessions for equipment operators to ensure they know how to use machinery properly. This type of training can help your company improve its efficiency. It may be helpful to keep records of training and put regular training refreshers on employees’ schedules to maintain their skills.

4. Regularly Perform Maintenance

Want to keep equipment running at a top level? You should regularly make repairs and conduct inspections. Letting small bits of damage go unrepaired can lead to more significant problems over time and cause your equipment to break down entirely. Broken equipment lowers your productivity as you wait for a replacement part or a new machine. By performing regular maintenance, you can catch wear and tear before it evolves into a bigger problem.

To ensure your equipment stays well maintained, you can train operators to troubleshoot problems, inspect the machines and conduct proper maintenance practices. You can also schedule preventative maintenance regularly to mitigate issues before they begin. By performing regular maintenance and cultivating a work culture that prioritizes repairs, you can help prevent work stoppages and unexpected downtime due to damaged equipment.

5. Keep Your Warehouse Layout Organized

Your warehouse’s layout directly impacts your productivity. If your staff can’t quickly access equipment or move products from one station to another, your efficiency can suffer. Many warehouse layouts are cluttered with tools and equipment that are rarely or inconsistently used. Some raw material handling tips for improved organization include:

Reduce distance: Having equipment and stations set up too far from each other can increase the time it takes to transition materials from one area to another. It also increases the movements your staff has to make, potentially causing more opportunities for user error and injury. Try to shorten the distance between stations linked in the production process.
Store unused tools and equipment: If there are tools and equipment that go unused for long periods of time left around your warehouse, they need to be stored away from the workspace. When they’re left out in production areas, they can obstruct pathways and make it challenging for staff to access critical materials and tools. Properly storing unused materials or selling them can help your warehouse be more organized and make it much easier to navigate.
Organize storage space: You should be able to find materials, tools and documents quickly. You don’t want your staff to waste time looking for something, so organizing your storage space is a must. Labeling all items and keeping a record of where items are stored can help improve your warehouse’s efficiency.

6. Invest in High-Quality Equipment

Even if you have an excellent layout and well-trained staff, you can still lose out on productivity by continuing to use outdated equipment. Older machinery often requires more manual input from operators, and it’s more likely to need repairs — both factors that can slow the speed of your production process. Newer equipment can also be used for tasks that once were done entirely by hand, making the process more efficient.

Invest in high-quality equipment that can handle processes faster and get materials moved down the line. New equipment can also be integrated into an automated system, which handles materials with little to no user input.

Why Sanitary Procedures and Products for Raw Material Handling Matter

Alongside improving the efficiency of your raw material handling processes, you should also be committed to proper sanitation practices. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have found that one in six Americans gets sick each year due to consuming beverages or food products that have been contaminated. This contamination can do more than leave you ill, as the CDC also reports that 3,000 people die each year from contracting a foodborne illness.

As a result of these risk factors, companies must make sure their raw materials aren’t contaminated at their warehouse. Warehouses with difficult-to-clean equipment and a lack of safety standards for moving raw materials open themselves up to higher risks of food contamination. Companies need to take sanitary procedures seriously and have a plan for how to reduce the risk of contamination.

Equipment for Sanitary and Efficient Material Handling

If you want to know how to move raw materials through various warehouse stages safely, you need top-quality equipment to reduce product loss and increase efficiency. Those who handle dairy, meat or other food products should be aware of this equipment as it can help create a more sanitary environment and reduce product contamination.

Below you can find some of the best machines for handling raw materials:

1. Plastic Pallets

Plastic pallets are some of the safest pallets for raw material transportation. Unlike wood, which is difficult to clean and has been linked to sanitary risks, plastic pallets are very simple to sanitize and effectively eliminate food product contamination. You can find pallets in a variety of forms, like rackable, nestable, stackable, export and drum pallets to meet your needs. These pallets are extremely versatile and can handle everything from light-duty to heavy-duty materials.

2. Pallet Washers

In addition to investing in plastic pallets, you can also invest in pallet washers. These washers can sanitize plastic, fiberglass, specialty and aluminum pallets. By purchasing washers, you’re committing to keeping your pallets free from contaminants, bacteria, dirt, dust, allergens and viruses. You can find manual and automatic pallet washers, with some of the automatic washers able to clean 200 pallets in an hour. Both types of washers are much faster than handwashing and free up your staff’s time for other tasks.

3. Stainless Steel Lift Tables

Stainless steel tables are one of the best assets those in food processing can have in their corner. They help position products to a level that makes it easier for staff to interact with the products without having to lift them manually. Stainless steel is the gold standard for lift tables, as the steel is easy to clean and highly durable.

These lift tables are essential since companies will likely have to slice, dump and sort food products in various stages to get them ready for consumption. A high capacity stainless steel lift table raises the table to the appropriate height without any strenuous labor on the worker’s part. High-quality lift tables meet strict food safety standards by incorporating passivated finishes, washdown components and continuous welds.

4. Pallet Inverters

When you work with raw materials, you likely use pallets to store and transport the materials throughout your handling processes. When you’re going to transfer loads from one pallet to another, pallet inverters are designed to make that exchange in just moments while at the same time protecting your employees from potential injuries generally caused by repetitive lifting and bending. Pallet inverters are also great for inverting products for metal sheet applications or also for identifying and replacing damaged product.

You can find high-quality pallet inverters that rotate at 180-degrees to make pallet exchange easy and fast. There are many different models and styles to choose from to match the types of pallets and products you plan to handle with them. They’re also designed to help you minimize product damage from improper manual handling practices while also promoting a safer work environment, as they reduce the need for staff to handle material on their own.

5. Spacer and Pallet Retrievers

Spacer and pallet retrievers are designed for cold storage facilities and meat processing plants that handle a heavy workload. These machines are built to combine loads, swap out pallets and get rid of freezer spacers quickly. You’ll see lots of freezer spacers used in handling frozen raw food, as they help air flow easily through containers, causing more efficient freezing. Eventually, you’ll need to remove these spacers to move the raw material to its next processing stage.

To save time and increase the safety of the spacer removal process, you can use spacer and pallet retrievers. They cut out the need for staff to manually remove spacers or pallets, making the removal process faster and reducing the chance of injury. Once the spacers are removed they can be washed and sanitized for future use.

Turn to Cherry’s Material Handling for Updated Equipment for Raw Material Handling

If you’re looking to improve the productivity and sanitation of your warehouse, you need equipment from Cherry’s. We assist companies in a variety of industries that handle raw material, and we specialize in assisting small and medium-sized companies find the right equipment for their warehouse. Our variety of top-quality equipment and responsive team can help you find the best equipment for your warehouse’s requirements.