The weigh forward
October 1st 2009

RDS Technology's Mark Evans reckons huge productivity and safety gains can be made with low cost, robust, onboard weighing systems.Brendan Coyne reports

The best thing about the materials handling industry is its diversity, according to RDS Technology business development manager,Mark Evans. "A two-man business can have a forklift requirement – right through to the biggest distribution centre, so the range of applications we come across is huge. It makes life interesting. You never know what application you will end up in from one day to the next and we learn from every site we visit." Beginning life in the agricultural sector in 1969, RDS now designs and manufactures monitoring and control instrumentation across various off road vehicle sectors.Within materials handling, its main products are onboard weighing and speed and distance monitoring: The Liftlog 100 – a weighing system and load monitor; the Liftlog 100+ which adds a totalising function; and the SID 200 – a speed and distance monitoring device with over speed alarm. Both product sets, says Evans, harness RDS' experience in heavy industries.

"Compared to quarrying and mining, the warehouse and logistics sector seems pretty clean to us. Our products are built to take the knocks metered out in the toughest environments, and that's one of our advantages." Another, he says, is service and support: the firm has four sales and service operations in England, one in Scotland and one apiece in the North and Republic of Ireland. "Our products are genuine retrofits – they fit every make of truck – so an engineer can arrive on site in a van, with a box of standard parts and attach it to whatever vehicle is in front of him."

Rapid payback RDS' third competitive advantage, claims Evans, is cost. "Before entering the forklift market last year, we looked at what was on offer, simplified it, and removed some of the cost," he says. "What we initially ended up with was Liftlog 100 – which is extremely easy to use, cost effective and delivers rapid payback period." By way of example, Evans cites an overnight freight company that receives palletised goods loaded onto double sided trailers from a central hub in the midlands. Paid by weight, the firm naturally wants to confirm pallet weight claims to ensure they are not freighting more than what they are being paid for.

"Now they use the Liftlog 100 to check weighs the pallets while loading the goods safely onto their own trailers for the onward journey," he says. "And the payback period is just three months." Return on investment is rapid wherever there is a need to check-weigh, according to Evans. "In a warehouse, a central platform scale is precisely that. Forklift operators have to drive from wherever they are working just to weigh a pallet, before driving back to get on with the job. That's wasted time and extra traffic – which increases the potential for accidents. By investing in an onboard scale, there is no downtime – it cuts all of that out." It follows that fuel and tyre savings, are also realised by eliminating unnecessary travel.

Safer double deck trailers While Evans says most customers tend to specify RDS' products for cost reasons, one recent customer, WH Smith, has improved distribution safety by fitting six on-board weighing systems to Toyota trucks at its Swindon Distribution Centre (pictured). The systems ensure double deck trailers are loaded correctly – with heaviest goods on the bottom. Evans hopes that as retailers drive the uptake of double deck trailers, RDS will capitalise on the need to ensure trailers are loaded safely – and not a danger to both drivers and the public.

Although RDS has several strands to its business, including the bouyant agriculture sector, Evans, like just about everybody else, is looking forward to the end of capital investment freezes that have hamstrung the materials handling sector for the past year.

He says while RDS' products are relatively low cost with rapid payback – and therefore especially justifiable in a recession – if spending is on hold, "you're in the queue with everybody else"… "But I think we're over the worst of it, and we look forward to helping people solve their problems next year and beyond."

More articles from RDS Technology Ltd: