Minomi Carts is a Japanese term meaning “peanut without a shell” that started being used during the proliferation of the Toyota lean manufacturing ideology. Minomi systems address the lean movement of material with less waste.
Because Minomi systems do not utilize containers or packaging but instead move components unprotected, significant time, space and dollars can be saved. The key is creating a system that ergonomically holds and protects the components during traortation and storage.
K Tec has found that many Minomi systems are not utilitarian because they are usually designed for one component and once there is a design change to that component, the usefulness of the Minomi cart ceases. To address this, K Tec has created solutions that have the flexibility to change as the components in your line change.
One of the solutions K Tec has employed is to use a common base Minomi style cart. The bolt-on upper is a light weight variant of the K-Connect mast and cross-arm design used to hold parts on rod brackets. The mast uses perforated tubing with “drop and lock” clips which hold adjustable and customizable “wing” tubes and plastisol coated support arms.
Moving arms on the mast to accommodate other part layouts is as simple as lift reposition and lock. The base of the cart uses a simple low profile 6-wheel spinner open frame cart (see photos). The low profile deck keeps parts in the correct ergo range and the 6-wheel design provides optimum ease of manual movement.
For those clients with space constraints, we have also designed our systems to be stackable when not in use. Optional provisions for towbars and recessed hitches allow carts to be tugged for long distance moves.
