From tinkering on her dad’s farm to tailoring forklift solutions for a global customer base, Amelia Elliott has come a long way while staying a stone’s throw from her home in Ireland’s County Monaghan.
As a Technical Sales Rep for Combilift, Amelia is the confident conduit between the company’s sales and engineering teams. With equal parts ingenuity and engineering expertise, she knows how to tailor any order using the company’s customised forklift capabilities. This requires consideration to factors such as load size and shape, aisle dimensions, operator experience, and overall safety. All of which results in solutions very specific to each order. A mechanical engineer by trade, Amelia was raised around all kinds of machinery – much like many of the Combilift crew who also grew up in the farming County. After a quick stroll through Monaghan’s verdant scenery, one might have no idea that a world-leading manufacturer sits on the outskirts of town. That is of course, unless you’re one of those locals who were drawn into working at Combilift’s state-of-the-art facility. From that young age, Amelia quickly developed a love of problem-solving, and she now has no shortage of customer problems to solve. Combilift’s popularity lends itself across industries such as materials handling, manufacturing, and food and beverage, meaning every order is a little bit unique. “Most customer are lifting standard things like pallets and such, but you’ll always get an enquiry that needs a bit more thought,” Amelia says. “For example, a forklift might need some modification to achieve the customer’s goals, and I’ll approach our engineers to discuss how we can help. “No two days are ever the same [at Combilift] and no two jobs are different. As much as a load is a load and a forklift is a forklift, it’s always different.” Factors like automation, machine learning, preventative maintenance, and accelerating consumer demand have forced multiple industries to deliver their goods on a much grander scale. However, this shift has caught some businesses unprepared, and a quick rethink of operations has been required to keep up. This inspired Combilift to combine over 20 years in volume optimisation with its innovative technology and present a free warehouse planning service. CEO, Martin McVicar, says the free service should be the very first step for any business. “We have a saying we’ve been using for the last number of years – It’s more important that the customers should optimise what they’re doing before they invest in automation,” he says. “That’s why we have a team of engineers who offer free warehouse design, and that really has enabled a lot of our customers to maximise their cubic footprint.”
In fact, some Combilift customers have achieved 100 per cent extra storage capacity by using Combilift’s multi-directional technology. By using products like the Combi-CS, -WR, the Combi-Cube, and the popular Aisle Master, operators can navigate narrower aisles with ease, allowing more product to be stored under one roof. The beauty of this solution is it applies to all kinds of industries – warehouses don’t discriminate! Materials handling, manufacturing, food and beverage, and retail are all in need of more efficient storage solutions as demand increases globally. All they need to do is contact Combilift and Amelia will begin improving the lives of everyone on the warehouse floor.
The warehouse design service includes an initial consultation before engineers will create a 2D and 3D visualisation of the customer’s new warehouse. This design will be presented to explain how Combilift can manoeuvre even long loads down narrow aisles, through doorways, and past obstacles. The solution will then be delivered and lifetime access to Combilift’s after-sales support team will iron out any issues. With any luck, customer issues will be fed straight back through to Amelia for further optimisation.
