IFOY Test Days 2015: jury tests nominated forklift and warehouse trucks

• International jury evaluates 14 forklifts, warehouse trucks and intralogistics solutions entered for the IFOY Award 2015 by five manufacturers. 
• Twelve nominated vehicles from Clark, Jungheinrich, Still, Toyota Material Handling and Unicarriers undergo the IFOY Test and Innovation Check over the course of one week. 

The excitement was almost tangible: during the test days for the International Forklift Truck of the Year, IFOY for short, on February 25 and 26 in Osnabruck, 22 jury members tested 12 trucks from manufacturers Clark, Jungheinrich, Still, Toyota and UniCarriers that had previously been nominated for the final round. 80 invited guests made the trip to Osnabruck to watch the tests as they were being carried out on the site of Hellmann Worldwide Logistics.

The first jury testing day began with the presentation of the nominated intralogistics solutions. In the atrium of the Hellmann headquarters, the team from Jungheinrich AG presented the nominated tugger train solution implemented at VEMAG Maschinenbau GmbH to the jury. Hamburg-based competitor Still then showcased a solution realised for the raw materials warehouse of the Kuraray company in Troisdorf, where semi-automatic pallet shuttle vehicles communicate with two automatic reach trucks in a rack-channel warehouse. As is now tradition, the jury also had the chance to test the nominated trucks in depth for themselves.

All this was preceded by just under a week of lifting, driving, measuring and stacking. The twelve new trucks that were nominated were put through their paces during a comprehensive testing protocol and the IFOY Innovation Check that took place in the specially prepared “Glass Hall” at logistics partner Hellmann in Osnabruck. The IFOY test devised by Dutch testing specialist Theo Egberts from Andersom Testing measures the hard data of each machine and compares it with the data for rival trucks. The scientific IFOY Innovation Check developed by the Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics (IML) in Dortmund assesses the innovative features of the trucks and the degree of innovation relative to the market. Both testing series form the basis for the final vote of the jury.

The award ceremony and announcement of the winners will take place in the “Double Cone” of BMW World in Munich on May 5 during the CeMAT@transport logistic fair. The IFOY Award is sponsored by the VDMA Materials Handling and Intralogistics Sector Association.