Is Material Handling the Last Frontier of Automation?

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

In this conversation with David Ly, technical sales manager at Inovaxe, the spotlight lands on one of EMS manufacturing’s most overlooked bottlenecks: material handling. While factories invest heavily in line automation, David argues that true efficiency gains come from automating the transactional data and traceability behind every reel—not just moving parts around. From image-driven receiving to pick-to-light smart racks, he demonstrates how EMS companies can reduce labor, eliminate errors, and achieve near-continuous uptime—often with ROI measured in months, not years.

Nolan Johnson: David, material handling is the heartbeat of the floor. If the assembly line is a money printer, don’t you have to feed it with paper?

David Ly: Exactly, you would need to provide it with paper, ink, and all the goods needed to produce. The way things are currently being done today in terms of automation means there's not a whole lot of it. People are focused on optimizing the production line itself, meaning the components per hour, inspection, reliability, and accuracy, from SSBI to pre- and post-oven AOIs. The process of the materials has been neglected—even bringing material from receiving into a facility is inefficient with our current methods.

Johnson: I assume you mean the current manual methods. Can you describe the process?

Ly: By that, I mean people are manually looking at barcodes, entering information into an ERP system, and applying labels. It only gets worse from there. They’re storing thousands and thousands of reels. Some customers have as many as half a million reels in stock at any given time, stored in a metal bin within their vast facility. Based on our case studies, it takes an average of two to five minutes per reel to locate, which is a relatively generous estimate, given that it can actually take up to 10 minutes to find a single reel, only to realize the reel is completely gone.

To continue reading this interview, which originally appeared in the December 2025 edition of SMT007 Magazine, click here.