Most Recent Articles

Batteries That Ruin Vacations?

About 7-8 years ago during one of our first annual Customer Satisfaction Surveys, one of our early and loyal customers was selected for an interview which is something we do to get some more qualitative insights to go with the quantitative results we get from the online survey. At the time this customer said something that we’ve always kept in mind as challenge we knew we would always need to devote our energy to solving a bit better every year. This was well before we had even conceived of creating our Lithium battery, the PowerSwap Nucleus, and at the time every cart we sold came with a rechargeable SLA battery similar to the ones still available today. Depending upon the configuration, most users would get 6-10 hours from a single charge, and then bring the entire cart to a power source for it to get recharged, usually overnight. One of the challenges with SLA however, has always been recovering them if they are left to run down completely without being recharged. Along with the relative weight this chemistry brings to a power source, this was the most common support issue we’ve traditionally had with SLAs.

Back to the survey. When the customer was asked in our interview “what is your biggest concern about your Newcastle carts?”, he responded “Going on vacation. Because I lose sleep wondering if someone made sure they were all plugged in at the end of the day.”

How Does Your Warehouse Compete for Workers? 

Who loves working in the warehouse industry? We do of course. But apparently YOU do too. Perceptions of outsiders regarding work in the industry sometimes suffer from a common dislike of work that is “dirty” or requires a level of physical exertion or discomfort not common to an office environment. While some parts of the industry still live up to what is generally an outdated image of the modern warehouse environment, the modern distribution center is thankfully a much safer, cleaner and generally stable work environment in most industries. This is from a combination of many things, including regulation, technology and automation, and perhaps most importantly – competition.

Unless your facility is consistently recognized as a bleeding edge innovator and always staying two steps ahead of the rest of your industry, you’re probably like the rest of us and are hungry to know more about how your facility performs or compares to your competitors or others in your industry.

Photo by Franck V. on Unsplash

“Industry 4.0” is a term now in common use generally to describe the “fourth industrial revolution”, a term that it is used interchangeably with. But what does it mean, on a high level and specifically for what impact it might have on your business?

To get us all on the same page, let’s first go back to “Industry 1.0” and be clear about the other distinct eras of industrial revolution:

In October, Newcastle Systems’ own Kevin Ledversis was on a team of presenters in a webinar that dug into the challenges managers are facing with labor issues – sourcing, hiring, training and retaining in addition to things like performance and pay.  We’ve covered labor and staffing as a regular topic here over the years, and think the data that was assembled for this webinar is worth sharing widely.

It’s not in our culture here to talk about ourselves too much, nor our products. We especially don’t like talking about OTHER products because we like to think ours can speak for themselves. That’s why nearly everything we publish here in our blog and white papers are about the things we know that help our readers the most – things like process, automation, warehouse management, lean practices, and more. And we always enjoy the feedback we get year-to-year that tells us you want more content like that, especially in regards to process and measurement.

If you’re at all plugged into the pulse of the industry, you probably recognize your facility as one of the following:

• Ultra-modern and already migrated to Android, with devices and plans for more of them.
• In transition or planning to transition from Windows to Android, and hoping to use your existing devices a bit longer
• Convinced that Android is only a phase, and adamant that your current green-screen devices are all you’ll ever need.

Theft from the supply chain is an old problem that even the newest facilities can’t entirely eliminate. A recent arrest in the Seattle area showed just how big a dent a small group of industrious thieves can make in even the biggest player in the industry.

The latest news from Newcastle Systems includes "No assembly required".  We have improved the delivery process by assembling the workstations in our manufacturing plant and packaging them for you to unpack in minutes. You can easily have the mobile workstation with portable power unpacked and rolling in minutes. We have assembly manuals, but soon they will become obsolete.

Warehouse design and management are an art form and  science unto their own. 3PLs and large retailers, in particular, have taken what was once a slow-moving, unseen part of a cost-center in the business and turned it into a highly efficient, increasingly automated, carefully measured and service-focused asset. Manufacturers, on the other hand, while being at the leading edge of automation, measurement and efficiency on the production floor, may not always apply the same level of industrial design planning and management as they would normally demand.

As it turns out, warehouse operations for a manufacturing facility have a lot of similarities as other types of businesses, but do have some requirements that are unique to their needs.