When it comes to the MHL industry, there wouldn't be much that MHL Show exhibitor Rob Fogarty hasn't dealt with, built, seen, developed or delivered on when it comes to moving goods and products around an industrial space.

He embodies the very best in what Kiwi businesses can be: down-to-earth, effective, humble, successful, a just-get-on-with-the-job type of stance that clearly delivers.

And delivering is what Rob's company Advance Conveyors has been doing for 22 years. Modern business speak might use a whole lot of jargon to explain his business philosophies - but Rob would probably be too busy helping customers to have much truck with that.

"The key thing is getting to understand what the customer is doing, what they would like to be doing and how they would like to do it," says Rob (www.advanceconveyors.co.nz).

"Every customer feels they have a particular problem that no one else has, but when you look at handling all products are similar whether its computer parts or biscuits: you have a product, you want it picked up, effectively moved from A to B, handled and moved along the picking system."

Primarily Advance Conveyors focuses on warehouse and distribution centres and can install anything from "two small still conveyors in a corner" to a complex large system. "We solve problems ... and we are designers I guess".

Rob has worked in materials and handling for 37 years and as an engineer and in manufacturing prior to that. The sum of those skills sees Advance Conveyors evolving into providing auxiliary solutions from racking and shelving to designing specific solutions for ergonomic packing stations or special trolleys.

"We had one customer who had 49 packing stations needing all sorts of computer tables and benches and everything at different height - so it was addressing a whole lot of problems and things like light issuing from monitors and providing solutions. Another wanted to make the stations more ergonomic, so we designed things to hold rolls of bubble wrapping and plastic packing slips."

Sheer experience means Rob can also deliver on-the-spot type answers to customer queries like the potential cost of a system to what kind of amp device their electrician would need to install.

Advance Conveyors favours simple systems that Rob says are applicable to "probably 99%" of New Zealand companies, the kind of systems that are easy to move, change, upgrade and "won't wear out in six or seven years".

He says it's only around one per cent of companies in New Zealand that would need highly automated, palleted or pneumatic systems of delivery. "Sure, we can do barcodes and divert things here and there but the vast majority of companies don't need that kind of solution.

"New Zealand is a pretty unique situation. We are not handling the volumes they have in Australia. Some of the big Australian companies would spend three or four million installing a conveyor system: in New Zealand it would take ten years before that had paid for itself.

"We do systems that are quite flexible and you can add to or replace things without it being a big drama. We've had customers relocate factories and use all the old equipment and add in new stuff. It can be quite cost- effective for the customers when they've already had the tax write-off from the old equipment."

Other clients are back for their fifth or sixth job with Rob. About 80 per cent of his business is from word-of-mouth.

Yet Rob says he's never seen the perfect conveyor system - not anywhere in the world. "It's never 100 per cent perfect, it's always about compromise ... the factory won't be quite symmetrical, the dispatch door will be in the wrong place."
He just wants to give the clients the best solution for what they need - and sometimes that means turning business away. "We've even had a situation where a guy was using two staff members on a job but we said we couldn't provide anything that would improve on what he was doing. There is no point selling something if a customer doesn't need it."

It's the kind of attitude that means it's been 22 years without customer complaints and with jobs finishing on designated deadlines; not that Rob mentions that as a boast, just as an almost forgotten aside.

"You just get a feel for it," says Rob of the conveyor business before adding in what a great industry and what great people materials, handling and logistics attract.

Advance Conveyors will be at Stand 168 at MHL Show

Register to visit (free) online. If you would like information on exhibiting please contact Murray Chapman on (09) 486 0077 (ext 718), or send an email, www.mhlshow.co.nz