ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to address the issue of costing as it relates to material handling. Material handling systems are an important component of any manufacturing and production operation. Logistics is often used to describe material handling activities. The chapter analyzes two types of material handling systems: vehicle based systems and conveyor systems. A typical material handling system is comprised of several components. They are as follows: equipment used to transport material, storage systems, unitizing equipment, and identification and tracking systems. The chapter also analyzes three types of conveyors as follows: single direction conveyors, continuous loop conveyors, and recirculating conveyors. It examines the material handling systems in terms of the metrics such as amount of time required to transport material between two points, cycle time per delivery per vehicle, number of carriers required in order to efficiently transport a given amount of production volume and work in process.
