PRESENTING AN INNOVATIVE PROCESS IMPROVEMENT METHOD FOR THE EFFICIENT FORKLIFT MATERIAL HANDLING SYSTEMS IN THE INDUSTRY 4.0

Abstract

The rapid adoption of Industry 4.0 principles in the manufacturing sector during the last couple of years has created numerous possibilities for development. One key area related to manufacturing in which Industry 4.0 solutions can have a significant impact is the field of materials handling. However, today the majority of manufacturing companies still overly rely on the utilization of standard forklift material handling systems for supporting their operations. In this paper, our goal is to present a novel process improvement method utilizing Industry 4.0 principles which could significantly aid in the design of efficient forklift material handling systems. We believe that by utilizing the opportunities inherent in Industry 4.0 (in this case mainly sensor systems, big data analysis, digitalization and real-time data transfer), forklift based material handling can be elevated to an entirely new level in terms of efficiency, which could greatly improve the overall performance of the vast majority of manufacturing systems.