The Boikarabelo field in South Africa's Waterberg region, to the north of the country and close to the border with Botswana, is an outstanding coal asset by any standards. An extensive coal seam, between 120 and 130 metres in depth and containing zones of varying quality thermal and soft coking coal, lies only 20 metres below the surface in terrain that is flat and easy to get at. It is the ideal site for an open pit mine: the shallow overburden means that a small fleet of equipment can produce a lot of coal.

Named after the famed General Sam Houston, former President of the Republic of Texas and the man responsible for commanding and winning the Battle of San Jacinto, the city of Houston was founded back in 1836 and incorporated a year later. Today the city is arguably best recognised as the home of the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, itself housing NASA’s Mission Control Center, and with a population of over 2.1 million people is the fourth-largest city in the United States.

Since its founding in 1931, H. J. O’Connell Ltd. (HJOC) has been a leading figure within the heavy civil engineering and construction industry. Originally led by Montrealer Herbert John O’Connell, the company has spent the last 80-plus years growing to become one of the planet’s leading specialists in heavy civil infrastructure construction, mining applications and energy development, and is today a vital supplier to Canada’s vast and lucrative resource industries.

Since its founding in 1931, H. J. O’Connell Ltd. (HJOC) has been a leading figure within the heavy civil engineering and construction industry. Originally led by Montrealer Herbert John O’Connell, the company has spent the last 80-plus years growing to become one of the planet’s leading specialists in heavy civil infrastructure construction, mining applications and energy development, and is today a vital supplier to Canada’s vast and lucrative resource industries.

Since its founding in 1931, H. J. O’Connell Ltd. (HJOC) has been a leading figure within the heavy civil engineering and construction industry. Originally led by Montrealer Herbert John O’Connell, the company has spent the last 80-plus years growing to become one of the planet’s leading specialists in heavy civil infrastructure construction, mining applications and energy development, and is today a vital supplier to Canada’s vast and lucrative resource industries.

The increase in profits to $126 million compares with a figure of $83.6 million a year earlier, with global net sales growing by 13 percent to reach $1 billion in that time frame. This beat the expectations of most analysts who predicted sales of $953.7 million in the first quarter of the year.

Tiffany chief executive Michael Kowalski said: "This is an excellent and encouraging start to the year."

“Since 2009, when I became President, we had been working on the Schaft Creek project in north-western British Columbia, slowly grooming it to the point where a major producer could step in as the operator of the project. That moment came last year when, in July, we concluded a joint venture agreement with Teck Resources Limited,” explains Chairman, President and CEO of Copper Fox Metals, Elmer B. Stewart.

Rich Hite, President of QC Software, a Tier 1 warehouse control systems solutions provider, suggested, “Even the best WMS has a brief lag time in transmitting of instructions to a high-speed sortation system. There are simply too many warehouses with tens of thousands of decisions being made daily that require split-second timing.”

Representing an AGV vendor is often a conflict of interest. The end-user customer’s interests may not align with the AGV vendor’s interests. The only way to avoid these conflicts is a vendor agnostic approach to automation. As a sales manager for several automated guided vehicle (AGV) companies there was an intention: sell AGVs. Performance was measured by number of vehicles sold per month, per quarter, per year, year over year, and at a measured profitability.

The historical perspective is easy to grasp. Automated product movement is a well-established, easily understood concept. It is so familiar and normative that many in the material handling sector consider conveyance technology little more than a commodity. That is a wild over-simplification. Conveyor solutions are developed from dynamic and complex challenges which require safe, ergonomic, tested and proven products, developed by creative people with a focus on lean manufacturing continuous process improvement.