a manner as to reduce accidents and lessen equipment damage. When practicable, move material in a horizontal plane or with the aid of gravity. The ideal lifting point of material is at the waist level. The nearer to the waist the material can be picked up or disposed of, the greater the efficiency. Material Handling Equipment Requirements A balanced operation provides for the optimum number of people and MHE to complete a specified workload. Too many personnel and not enough MHE (or vice versa) can cause bottlenecks. To produce a smooth operation, you should know how to determine the MHE requirements for the job. You should consider several factors when selecting the MHE requirements. If all supplies to be moved are palletized and squared off for stacking, you may need a forklift truck and operator. However, you might need personnel to manually handle some materials. Terrain, location arrangement, design of the building, and extent of the open storage area will also affect MHE requirements. Material characteristics will also affect selection of the required MHE. Some material may require the use of electric or battery-operated forklift trucks. COMPUTING MHE REQUIREMENTS.– TIhe following factors should be used in computing MHE requirements. l l l l The volume or size of the operation to be performed (for example, the number of pallet loads to be moved to another area is 48 pallets). The number of units of the volume carried in each trip (for example, the number of pallets carried by the forklift truck in each trip is two pallets). The average time expended to accomplish a round trip (for example, one round trip takes 5 minutes to finish). The allotted time to finish the job (for example, the job should take 2 hours to finish). The formula for determining the MHE requirement is as follows: FORMULA: ~xT+AT=R Explanation of symbols; V —  Volume or size of the operation to be performed C —  Units of volume carried per trip by MHE T — Average expended time to complete around trip AT —  Allotted time to do the job R — Equipment requirement Using the data in the examples above, the computation will be as follows: ~ x 5 + 120 (rein)= 1 forklift truck NOTE: We use the requirement for forklift trucks in the example assuming the distance of travel is less than 400 feet). COMPUTING PALLET REQUIREMENTS.— The measurements of a standard pallet is 40 x 48 inches. Allowing for overhang (roughly 25 percent), the square feet occupied by each pallet is approximately 16(4 ft x 4 ft). If procedures permit stacking of four pallets high, four pallets are required for each 16 square feet of net usable storage space. The formula for determining pallet requirements is as follows: FORMULA: Explanation of symbols: S— Net covered storage area, (in SQ FT) used for bulk storage. H—Average stacking height expressed in pallet course (pallet loads). D—Square feet of floor area occupied by pallet size with 25 percent added to compensate for load overhang and clearance. R—Quantity of pallets required. For an example, compute the pallet requirements for 59,500 feet of usable floor spare with stacking height of four pallets. The computation is as follows: 2-25