Game
On
Transforming MHE into a Strategic Asset
Today and Tomorrow
2024
4
5
6
7
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Day-to-Day Operations: The Three Keys to Successful MHE Maintenance
Thinking Bigger: The Three MHE Metrics You Need to Track Closely
Preparing for the Long Term: How to Bypass MHE Automation Paralysis
Key Take Aways
Optimizing Efficiency with Material Handling Equipment
3
MHE Solutions | 2
Welcome to the New Era of Material Handling Solutions Video
8
About Kenco
9
| TABLE OF CONTENTS
Based on years of real-world successes and in-depth conversations with our customers, our Kenco MHE Solutions team has compiled the best practices you should follow at every level of MHE management: day-to-day maintenance, ongoing decision-making using advanced equipment analytics, and long-term MHE automation strategy. This eBook shares valuable insights and explores how Kenco MHE Solutions can help you tackle all of these activities.
Every workflow must function in harmony to ensure goods flow to the consumer without disruption. One misstep at the beginning of the chain will delay arrivals to the warehouse or distribution center, which can lead to empty store shelves. And with buyers conditioned to expect fast, cheap delivery, the pressure to move the supply chain faster will only continue to increase.
Your Secret Weapon: Material Handling Equipment (MHE)
Fortunately, you have a secret weapon to handle this pressure – your material handling equipment (MHE). When strategically deployed and maintained, it can make all the difference. Whether it’s traditional machines such as forklifts and pallet jacks, or state-of-the-art autonomous mobile robotics, MHE multiplies the power of your human workforce. It increases the number of goods you can manufacture, how quickly you can move an order from picking to packing, and how safe your team can maneuver within your facility. When you begin to look at your MHE as a strategic asset, you’ll find new ways to leverage its power for more productive facilities.
From the factory floor to warehouse aisles, few facilities demand the level of precision required in work environments along the supply chain.
MHE Solutions | 3
Material handling equipment assets are the workhorses of your facilities, but they don’t often get the attention they deserve – at least, when they’re functioning properly. As soon as they break, they’ll bring your facility to a screeching halt. Unfortunately, you don’t always have the resources to dedicate a team entirely to maintaining MHE assets. You’ll need to think strategically about how you manage MHE to keep your facility running like clockwork, while keeping your eye on the bigger picture.
Day-to-Day Operations
Watch your data closely
When you need assurance your MHE will work no matter what, there’s comfort in choosing a big brand name. After all, it takes years of proven success to build a brand, so there’s implicit peace-of-mind in partnering with a leader. There’s also a high price tag, however, so it’s important to scrutinize every piece of MHE that might enter your facility. Instead of defaulting to the industry leader, look beyond the brand to how the equipment will interact with your other assets. Operational consistency is the goal. Use your own success stories from other facilities to understand what brands and what types of equipment mix and match well, and work with each vendor to understand how their assets will streamline your unique processes. Once you achieve consistency from facility to facility, you’ll also have the freedom to move equipment between facilities as demand increases and decreases. Finally, no matter which brand you work with, consider working with a vendor-neutral maintenance team to avoid the politics and headaches of managing a different contact for each brand.
Supply chain professionals are tasked daily with moving goods as quickly as possible, with as few resources as possible. Still, if that means cutting operational corners, the long-term costs could far outweigh the short-term benefits. If, for instance, you choose the cheapest lithium battery possible for your forklifts, you might see immediate cost savings – but if the batteries malfunction and damage the equipment, you’ll have to buy an entirely new asset much earlier than necessary. Before you make any decisions around purchasing or repairing your MHE, be sure to center productivity in the conversation. Take the time to understand the asset’s historical uptime, and how much every minute of downtime could cost you, when comparing two vendors. Once you purchase an asset, confirm you understand the potential risks of conducting maintenance with non-vendor-approved parts. And don’t be afraid to seek out third-party advice if you need help comparing the potential productivity gains of different assets before making a purchase.
As your MHE goes through its daily paces, one of your jobs is to keep tabs on all operational data – remaining cycle life, health & safety concerns, uptime & downtime. But there are other data-driven activities that, if not actively monitored, can cause unexpected costs. Take your MHE lease, for example. Running your asset over the number of hours specified in your contract will lead to a jaw-dropping extra charge at lease end. Of course, staying within the lease’s boundaries also requires detailed scheduling for when to swap assets out during normal operations – another source of data you must monitor. Tracking all this data is a juggling act, one that takes away from time your team could spend on revenue-generating projects. Consider investing in software that can help you manage all these data streams to ensure you are not getting overcharged, and that you are keeping maintenance schedules on track. You can also work with a third party that can manage your data and complete ongoing MHE maintenance for you – keeping your assets on track without consuming your tight resources.
Don’t get hung up on brand
Make every decision with productivity in mind
1
2
CLICK THROUGH 3 KEYS BELOW
The Three Keys to Successful MHE Maintenance
MHE Solutions | 4
Leveraging the competitive nature of humans in workplaces has been proven to yield productivity gains. Gamification can boost employee motivation and make routine jobs and tasks more enjoyable. By introducing rewards and friendly competition, gamification encourages more engagement and visibility. When employees are able to visualize and measure their own performance against a standard, a goal, or even relative to other employees, they’re more driven to succeed.
One Kenco customer achieved a 3% improvement in loading time and $172,000 in savings after implementing Rocket Turn.
Rocket Turn
Digital Displays for Visibility & Transparency at the Loading Dock
—Kristi Montgomery, VP Innovation and R&D at Kenco
Each quarter, Kenco runs an “Idea Challenge” across all of our associates to source ideas for overcoming specific work-related challenges and improving the business as a whole. Ideas get upvoted by other employees and the ones with the most votes receive a prize for their creative contributions. Additionally, top ideas also have the opportunity to be implemented in our warehouses.
Increasing Employee Motivation & Productivity
Real-time visibility is a key component of any gamification strategy. Kenco has implemented Rocket Turn Digital Displays to give both employees and managers visibility into loading dock status and progress. These displays show key information about the loading door’s current task, including assigned associate, shipment number, start and due out time, percent target complete, and more. The display features a color indicator of green, yellow, or red to indicate progress and help identify loads that have reached a critical stage.
In Kenco’s warehouses that have implemented gamification, we’ve seen productivity improvements in the 3-5% range compared to sites without it.
Improving Hiring and Retention
At Kenco, we use the Gallup Q12 Employee Engagement Survey, and one of the questions asked is, ‘Do you have a best friend at work?’ If I’m on a team with you and we’re seeking to achieve a goal together—a pizza party, extra PTO, whatever it is—we start to get to know one another on a personal level. We’re rooting for each other to succeed in our shared goal. It just drives a different level of engagement and excitement about the work.
Team-based approaches to gamification can increase employee engagement and retention by offering opportunities to collaborate and connect with coworkers. These opportunities can help build and nurture both professional and personal relationships that create camaraderie and build community among the workforce.
Reducing Direct Labor Costs
Say you have one supervisor for every ten associates on the floor. If you’re able to implement a peer coaching model where the team is driven to succeed, you could potentially have one supervisor for every fifteen associates. As a result, you’ve lowered your overall labor costs at the facility level.
When employees are oriented around their team’s success in addition to their individual success, they’re more likely to help each other out to make the group successful. Team-based approaches have the opportunity to leverage peer coaching and even reduce direct labor costs.
Driving Innovation and Ideation
Many gamification tactics today are designed to improve operational efficiency by motivating employees to work more productively. But there are opportunities to apply gamification elsewhere, to drive improvement in other important areas of the business, like innovation and continuous improvement.
Gamifying Innovation with Kenco’s “Idea Challenge”
Labor shortages continue to challenge warehouses across the nation. As a result, many warehouses have turned to gamification as a means of attracting newer, younger workforces. Gamification can also have a positive impact on retention, as a 2024 Lucas Systems study polling 750 U.S. and UK on-floor warehouse workers found. Nearly 84% of respondents said they were more likely to stay with a company that developed workplace competitions around their day-to-day tasks.
Asset lifespan How long is too long?
Asset optimization Are you maximizing MHE productivity?
Safety Are you taking every step possible to reduce risk?
One of a logistic pro’s greatest headaches is keeping track of how often each piece of MHE is utilized and comparing that against recommended lifespan. Think of all the forklifts on the floor, vs. robots, pallet jacks and conveyors. Each one of those has a different recommended cycle life. Then consider how many different brands are on the floor, because those manufacturers’ unique specifications impact lifespan too. So instead of trying to adjust replacement schedules to ensure each piece of MHE is retired at the right time, managers often apply rigid rules to lifespan, leading to incredible waste in productivity from both early and late retirement. With budgets tight and turnaround time for new MHE measured in years, now’s a good time to consider tools for tracking more granular data related to MHE lifespan – such as cycle count and battery life. Understanding when a product can be pushed a bit longer without creating a safety issue, or whether keeping an asset in operation will increase risk, can help facility managers ensure they’re getting their money’s worth from individual assets.
As consumers demand faster shipping for lower costs, that same desire has taken hold on warehouse and manufacturing floors: how can I move goods out the door expending the fewest resources possible? Unfortunately, that attitude leads managers to cut corners. It might mean choosing the cheaper forklift up front, then paying for it via increased downtime. Or it could mean waiting a little longer than recommended to replace parts. Sure, you might be able to stretch tire replacement into the next fiscal year, but if a forklift has a blowout, you have downtime and perhaps an OSHA violation that are going to cost you so much more than new tires. And ultimately, this approach has a negative impact on your most important asset – your employees. Every minute they’re sidelined, waiting for critical MHE to be repaired, is another minute morale is negatively impacted. A smarter approach: take a deeper look at your data to ensure each of your assets are being used appropriately day-to-day, and that they’re being used in the right facilities. You may find that older MHE assets can be moved to a less critical facility and improve output. Or, you may uncover a facility with half the output as your busiest facilities somehow have 20 more forklifts than needed. You can also make better decisions about what types of MHE to purchase, looking to multi-purpose assets that can reduce spending without reducing productivity.
Supply chain and manufacturing professionals know data drives everything we do. We’re measured on productivity, downtime and resource management. Every step in our facilities is measured, every pick monitored. It all must work like clockwork to keep up with customer expectations. That’s why we must also pay close attention to material handling equipment metrics. Understanding how your MHE is being used can help you identify productivity roadblocks months or even years before they cause disruption. There are three key asset metrics your facility should be tracking above all:
Thinking Bigger
SAFETY Are you maximizing MHE productivity?
Without a doubt, safety is a facility manager’s top priority. Both asset lifespan and utilization play a role in reducing the risk of accidents, but it’s worth specifically calling out safety – because tracking data related to it can help correct unsafe behaviors before they cause downtime. Nobody is productive, experienced or talented enough to act unsafely, and while it’s important for managers to actively walk the floors and call out unsafe actions, their eyes can’t be everywhere. Advanced telemetry tools can be an extra pair of eyes, taking note of each time an asset moves too quickly or brakes too hard. This technology can even be programmed to lock a driver out of an asset until they’ve performed a complete safety check prior to operation. As telemetry tools gather data, managers can better identify patterns in a specific employee’s actions – are they acting unsafely out of “will” or “skill,” because of knowing disregard or lack of training – and determine appropriate corrective actions.
CLICK TO EXPLORE
The Three MHE Metrics You Need to Track Closely
MHE Solutions | 5
Start with your repetitive activities
Examine your processes
Set your rules
Successful automation projects don’t start with the goal of reinventing an entire process. Rather, they target one or two specific pain points – for example, a pallet movement, or a specific movement within the picking process. Narrowing your focus can help the project seem far less overwhelming. Spend some time on the facility floor observing the flow of goods from MHE asset to MHE asset and see which inefficiencies most impact productivity downstream. Then, quantify the expenses related to that inefficiency to create an automation cost/benefit analysis. Remember: automation for automation’s sake can hurt productivity rather than help. If you haven’t researched which of your MHE assets would benefit from the upgrade, you’ll invest precious resources in technology that offers no improvement over manual processes, or could even slow operations down. For every investment you make, you should have a clear understanding of how long it will take to achieve ROI.
Automation can work wonders within your facilities, but it does have its limits. Before you install these assets, you’ll need to ensure all the workflows they’ll join are optimized – a robot can only work with the instructions you give it, and bad instructions will lead to unproductive outcomes. Take picking for instance. If you plan to integrate autonomous mobile robots to pick items or cases, check to ensure all your inventory management processes keep your stock data clean and up to date. A robot can only pick a case if it’s actually in stock and in the right location. The benefits of upgrading your processes go beyond preparing for your first project, however. You’ll likely find a productivity boost before the technology is even installed, and you’ll start to see other opportunities for automation that will make transitioning to your next project considerably smoother.
As you’re preparing your warehouse for automated MHE, consider the impact these new tools will have on your employees. If it’s the first time robots have operated within your facility, you’ll need to define the area the robots will traverse, and try to minimize spaces where humans and robots cross paths. If/when they do, there should be clear directions for how humans should approach the intersection to avoid injury. In the months leading up to integration, pay close attention to the attitudes toward automation within your facility. Look to build a culture where continuous improvement is celebrated. When employees feel involved in the integration process, they’ll be more motivated to learn about and take the reins of the new solution quickly. This approach makes it much easier to train your employees on safety precautions and proper care and use of the new assets, and potentially speed up the time it takes to see ROI.
If you had the opportunity to visit a supply chain trade show in the last few years, you might’ve felt a little overwhelmed by the sheer number of automation solutions available. From palletizers to conveyors, autonomous mobile robots to drones, aisle after aisle offer multiple reminders that there is no shortage of ways to implement next-gen technology in your facility. These innovations are in many ways a blessing, but they can also be a curse. With so many options and so many vendors to implement, understanding where to start can leave you paralyzed. You know you want to transition away from time-consuming manual processes, but there’s fear of picking the wrong technology and wasting resources. And even if it is the right technology, will it be integrated incorrectly and leave value on the table?
Preparing for the Long Term How to Bypass MHE Automation Paralysis
Stop and take a deep breath.
Automation isn’t a race, and it’s worth taking your time to be certain you’re making the right investments – particularly when it comes to materials handling equipment. If you’re ready to automate but are stuck in the research phase, here’s a guide to making your first project a reality.
MHE Solutions | 6
Too Many Choices Can Leave You Paralyzed – How Do You Choose the Right Automation Solution?
Onsite Support places a Kenco MHE expert in your facilities, ensuring your assets undergo routine maintenance and timely repairs – no matter the brand. And because we have decades of experience working with a wide variety of MHE vendors, we can help you make the right decisions for your facility’s needs when it comes time to purchase new assets.
Strategic Insights offers the tools, data and consultancy to help you gain deeper visibility into all your assets, across all your facilities. We can help you track lifespan for each individual asset, determine when to reuse vs. retire an asset, and how to strategically position your MHE across your facilities. The numbers speak for themselves: on average, Kenco MHE Solutions customers save 26% by optimizing their existing MHE. You can also pair our FleetCloud telemetry technology with Strategic Insights to keep track of safety measures throughout your supply chain.
Automation Guidance helps you envision and execute every step of your existing infrastructure – from forklifts to pallet jacks, to conveyors and robotic picking tools, and everything in-between. We’ll work with you to identify the right areas of your warehouse to address, handle all procurement, construction and installation, and offer ongoing management of your assets.
MHE Solutions | 7
Staying on top of day-to-day maintenance. Leveraging analytics strategically in your decision-making. Envisioning an automated future for your facility. Each of these tasks is a full-time job by itself, and you should never feel as if you must tackle them alone.
The offerings within Kenco MHE Solutions are designed to help you address these pressing pain points.
Explore More
Onsite Support
Strategic Insights
Automation Guidance
What Kenco MHE Solutions customers are saying:
— Sr. Manager, Operations Leader
We had a smooth, no-dip transition when moving to (Kenco MHE Solutions). We've seen the benefits of a solid relationship, operational reliability and great cost savings in the first 3 months.
Kenco is a proactive partner for our MHE space. They’ve increased services for a lower cost; Provide accurate spending forecasts; share monthly cost dashboards where they gap any cost overage; and streamlined communication and collaboration amongst our teams to find timely solutions for our business needs. It has been a pleasure working with Kenco’s MHE leadership & shop technicians.
By partnering with Kenco, we can ensure communication and transparency throughout all facilities, allowing us to take what is learned at one site to apply it at another.
— Facilities Planner
It’s about results and reliability. If Kenco says they’re going to do something, they’ll do it.
— Logistics Purchasing Manager
I think one of the key challenges with any project like this is getting adoption. More tenured employees who have done things the same way for a long time may be skeptical of new initiatives. It’s about managing the ‘why’ and the ‘what's in it for me’ so they understand why you want to go about this.
SCENARIO 2
In order to do that, Kristi recommends communicating and working collaboratively with employees to get their input on the front end.
If I work in inventory control and you're an inbound trailer unloader, and the metric I need to meet is 300 cycle counts per hour, and yours is 50 unloads per hour, it may seem like I have a lot more work to do than you do. That can cause challenges so it’s important to communicate that we’re driving fairness across the organization.
SCENARIO 1
Part of a good change management and communication strategy is ensuring employees understand the fairness of the program. With warehouses employing a wide range of individuals with different skills and job requirements, it can be difficult to compare performance and output.
MHE Solutions | 8
Discover how we're transforming the future of material handling—watch the video below to learn more!
A New Era of Material Handling Solutions
© 2025 Kenco Group | 2001 Riverside Drive, Chattanooga, TN | KencoGroup.com
ABOUT KENCO
Kenco provides integrated logistics solutions that include distribution and fulfillment, comprehensive transportation management, material handling services, and information technology—all engineered for Operational Excellence. Building lasting customer relationships for over 70 years, our focus is on common sense solutions that drive uncommon value. Visit Kenco at KencoGroup.com.
If you're ready to dive into MHE analytics or start a project that elevates your equipment into a strategic advantage, Kenco is here to support you. Visit the Kenco MHE Solutions website to learn more, or contact us to begin the conversation today.
Explore Our Expertise and Unlock the Full Potential of Your Material Handling Equipment
Ready to Transform Your MHE Strategy?
This is a modal window.
Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window.
End of dialog window.
