Momentum builds for World Materials Handling Alliance

Momentum is building behind the World Materials Handling Alliance following its inaugural meeting at January's ProMat show in Chicago.

As reported by Maximum Capacity Media (MCM) titles, U.S.-based material handling association MHI hosted a meeting with four other major global trade associations at McCormick Place, where it sponsors the biennial trade event.

Actually, as pictured, the literature on a dedicated booth at the show referred to the group as the World Materials Handling Association. MCM was told: "In early discussions both 'association' and 'alliance' were used to characterize the envisioned structure. At the inaugural meeting during ProMat, 'alliance' was selected as the better and more descriptive option."

This week, MHI CEO George Prest (pictured) sent a communication to all those who stopped by the World Materials Handling Alliance (WMHA) booth at ProMat saying the group "has prepared a program of work forward that will provide important resources for both providers and users of material handling and logistics equipment, systems and services."

He went on to outline these as:

– Information on markets: for example, public statistics on production and trade statistics;

– State of technology in the regions represented;

– Regulation information: latest and upcoming national / regional regulatory requirements and standards (safety, environment, energy, etc).

WMHA will hold the contact details of those who visited its booth "for the express purpose of informing of its work programming and outcomes".

Other associations involved in this initiative are, Beijing Materials Handling Research Institute and Chinese Mechanical Engineering Society (for China); Federation Europeenne de la Manutention (for Europe); Japan Institute of Material Handling (for Japan); and MHI (for the U.S).

The communication was signed George Prest, CEO, MHI, a WMHA 2013 Host Organization.