5 Types of Carts for Industrial Material Handling

Kitting carts are one of the central aspects of using kitting areas to make your production line leaner. A kitting area is a place where all the components that come from the supplier are stored. The parts are unpacked there and sorted for kitting carts.

The purpose of this type of cart is to collect all the parts for a particular process or even completely assemble a product. Material handling systems enable the construction of carts with custom slots for each component. This ensures that nobody uses the assets for anything else.

In the end, a kitting cart lets you distribute your components needed on the production line without interfering with the workflow. All the parts required for a task are therefore within easy reach. This reduces the amount of time wasted by your employees to unpack components on the production line.

Large manufacturing plants often require moving massive quantities of parts and products from one station to another. Tuggable carts, built with a system like Flexpipe, will allow you to move these components more easily without increasing traffic in your warehouse.

You can use special parts on your structures to connect and simultaneously tow up to six carts. This technique will optimize the movements on your production floor. However, be sure to have the right machinery when pulling a cart train.

Tugger carts are often used to replenish flow racks by transporting bins that contain production components. This ensures that the operator who fills the flow rack can do more in one pass than with only one cart.

WIP (Work in Progress) carts are the perfect solution to move goods in progress from one workstation to another one or to move the products from a station to a WIP rack located in a holding area. Like the other types of carts built with a modular system, you can customize these structures to hold the product at any stage of the process.

Using this kind of structure reduces the number of errors your employees can make by providing them with equipment made specifically for one task. Using WIP structures like carts and racks will, in the long run, reduce overstock and save floor space.

You could buy an all-purpose utility cart and try to adjust the cart dimensions. You could also design and build the right picking cart for you with a pipe and joint system such as Flexpipe. There are as many configurations of structures possible as there are different components in your facility.

This category is usually the commonly used one in manufacturing plants. Fun fact: the shape and dimensions for this type of structure are sometimes the most uncommon! Does your order picker need to go through a narrow alley or do you need to optimize the picking of parts with odd shapes? No problem! You can design and build a cart that will meet these two criteria. As a matter of fact, the distinct advantage of a modular system is that it adapts to your environment and not the other way around.

If you need to ship components quickly from one factory to another, the truck cart is a great option. With this transportation method, you don’t need to unload the cart and reload another one in the next facility. You can save unnecessary handling. Depending on the configuration of your structures, there are many ways to ensure your shipment arrives safely. Remember to secure the carts properly so that they don’t move into transportation.

There is one slight inconvenience to this type of transportation: you may need to return the empty cart to the original facility. Nonetheless, truck carts are the most efficient when you need to save time and ship as quickly as possible.

To learn more about carts and the best way to build them, make sure to read our article How to Build Carts and Racks.