When you have multiple materials going to one or more destinations, you have to decide how you are going to get the right material to its intended destination. Toting a Gaylord out to the process machine with a forklift or a pallet jack is time consuming and clogs up valuable manufacturing space. Keeping materials in a central location – preferably in surge bins or silos – even centrally located Gaylords is a more efficient arrangement.

With centrally located material storage, you have a variety of material selection methods available. You can choose from open array manifolds, cabinet-enclosed manifolds with Auto ID of materials or automatic distribution valves with full pellet-to-product Verification, Validation, Tracing and Recording capabilities.

The features, benefits and initial cost of these methods vary greatly, so a thorough investigation is necessary.

An example of relative costs: