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