Time was when choosing a new forklift fleet, despite the many issues, like the need to carefully consider the acquisition methods, the small print snares in contracts, and the comparative life cycle costs and productivity rates of different truck makes, it was not too onerous an exercise. Today, however, the wise truck fleet buyers will need to heed near future things to come or risk ending up with a fleet that is less than just right for one’s application. Industry 4.0 is one of those near future issues.
Industry 4.0 is essentially a blue print for digitalising the value chain from factory to customer, combing logistics, production, IT, engineering and engineering production to digitalise business operations. It has four strands to it but the two of interest to forklift users are 1) ‘smart factories’ and 2) the internet of services. The smart factories will be automated and flexible manufacturing processes integrated with customers and business partners in support of product life cycle changes and these will impact current factory layouts.
Last year forklift giant, Linde, who views Industry 4.0 as a completely digitised and integrated world in which all perspectives are linked, gave a taster of things to come in the ‘smart factory’. Without any manual operators in sight, each truck was self-driven and with every truck positon in the warehouse known precisely, an activity map allowed assessment of the routes a truck might take within a certain time frame, allowing optimised path planning and accident-risk reduction opportunities.
For new truck buyers, however, wondering which energy source to choose Linde made the point that thanks to electric energy innovations the days of IC trucks were numbered. They have taken to developing Lithium-ion and hydrogen fuel cell technology as the way ahead, which should drastically cut fuel costs but not performance when compared with diesel or LPG. Mitsubishi says fuel bills far outweigh a forklift’s initial purchase price or rental while Yale Europe Materials Handling see increasing environmental pressure and legislation goading companies into converting their fleet to electric power. Thus in the truck selection exercise the decision makers should take into account how technology changes are shifting bias in one direction or another in both truck types and motive power.
On the former, for example, John Maguire, sales and marketing director of Flexi Narrow Aisle, says: “We are likely to see changes in the type of trucks specified for different applications.” He views the man-up turret truck as likely to disappear because it is viewed as inefficient and costly technology now that reliable, truck-mounted CCTV is available for positioning pallet loads at height.
New developments in attachments could also affect the mix of one’s fleet. A good example is Translift Bendi’s SpaceMate which quickly converts a standard counterbalance forklift into a VNA truck for only about one third of the cost of an articulated forklift.
Not everyone, like Martin McVicar, MD of Combilift, agrees that sophisticated technology for the sake of it is the way forward. Forklifts, after all, are designed to be robust and incorporating too many intricate and sensitive systems and components can be counter productive as this impacts reliability and so raises the risk of downtime and creates more complicated and costly service and maintenance, an observation that could also be made on hybrid trucks. Even so, fleet buyers should consider the way the forklift industry appears to be heading rather than just basing their buying decisions on the ways they have always done.
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