Carter Intralogistics Blog

3 Key Benefits of Mobile & Flexible Conveyor

In today’s modern material handling world, rigid conveyor systems are quickly running out of style. While these traditional have always made up the majority of conveyor used in e-commerce and retail distribution, fast changing customer expectations and fluctuations in demand warrant new types of conveyance technologies. Further compounding this shift is the economic and supply chain disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. These factors have contributed to a dramatic shift to mobile and flexible conveyor solutions in lieu of traditional “bolted down” systems. These solutions have many benefits of their more permanent counterparts, all of which boil down to providing agility in the supply chain. This article will cover the three most important benefits of mobile and flexible conveyor solutions.

The first key benefit of flexible and mobile conveyor solutions is that they afford companies flexibility to make changes and decision even after the conveyor is quoted, purchased, and delivered. With traditional conveyor, installation times are at a minimum six weeks — and that doesn’t include quoting, pricing, and designing the solution before delivery and installation. Things change quickly in warehouses. Demands rise and fall; labor comes and goes. It’s truly impossible to design a rigid conveyor system that is future-proof in the sense that no change could come along and disrupt it. The key benefit of flexible and mobile conveyor is that it is much more “future-proof” than rigid conveyor because it allows companies to rearrange their conveyor lines to fit the space available in the warehouse.

While its presence is shrinking in modern material handling applications, rigid conveyor does have its space in various industries and will never go away completely. The second biggest benefit of flexible and mobile conveyor systems is that they can be used to augment existing systems. For example, Company A has a rigid conveyor system with sortation and transfers that sort and ingest inbound inventory. As their business increases, they’re finding their input zones are not keeping up with the amount of inventory entering the warehouse. Company A could then deploy flexible and mobile conveyor units to other areas in the warehouse, connecting additional input zones to their existing conveyor solutions. Rather than completely scaling up and designing a brand-new, expensive solution, they can simply invest in rapid-deploy flexible and mobile conveyor solutions to augment their existing system.

The third and final key benefit of flexible and mobile conveyor solutions is perhaps the simplest — they allow companies to reconfigure their warehouse space without having to tear down and uninstall their conveyor systems. As stated previously, available space in warehouses is a hot commodity and changes all the time. With fluctuations in demand comes fluctuations in labor and inventory. Those extra workers and that extra inventory needs go somewhere, right? Flexible and mobile conveyor solutions are a warehouse manager’s dream come true. If they must deal with extra inventory, they can shift their existing conveyor lines as needed to accommodate for floor space being sucked up by extra inventory.

Flexible and Mobile Conveyors are Carter’s Specialty.

Carter Intralogistics is a leading innovator and manufacturer of flexible and mobile conveyor solutions. Our CarterMobile™ and CarterFlex™ lines are versatile, flexible, light weight, cost-effective, easy to install and operate, and integrate seamlessly with existing rigid conveyor solutions. We currently have lead times as low as 2 weeks for our CarterMobile™ and CarterFlex™ lines. If you think these flexible and mobile conveyor solutions can help your business — we want to know about it. Call us at (301) 698-4998 or email our team at sales@carterintralogistics.com to get pricing and accurate lead times for your business.