Material handling can be defined as art and science of conveying, elevating, positioning, transporting, packaging and storing of materials. Starting from the time, the raw material(such as fibres for spinning unit or yarns for weaving/ knitting unit and fabrics for wet processing or garments units) enters the mill gate and goes out of the mill gate in the form of finished products; it is handled at all stages within mill boundaries such as within and between raw material stores, various section of production department, machine to machine and finished product stores. Material may be handled even 50 times or more before it changes to finished product. It has been estimated that average material handling cost is roughly 10-30% of the total production cost depending upon product to process. By saving in the material handling cost, the cost of production can be reduced considerably. Material handling involves the movement of materials, manually or mechanically in batches or one item at a time within the plant. 

Proper material handling offers benefits :

• improving productivity.
• increasing the handling capacity.
• reducing man-power.
• increasing the speed of material movement.
• reducing materials wastage.
• promoting easier and cleaner handling via. eliminating the idle time of machines, equipment and workers iii.
• reduce fatigue incurred by the workers
• increasing safety and minimising accidents.
• locate and stock material better and in less Space
• minimising production cost, etc.

In the textile industry, boiler/steam is generally used for different production processes, such as dyeing, drying, heating, etc. List of  boiler machine for Textile Mills and Apparel Industry is  closed vessel in which water or other liquid is heated, steam or vapor is generated, steam is superheated, or any combination thereof, under pressure or vacuum, for use external to itself, by the direct application of energy from the combustion of fuels, from electricity or nuclear energy. These are fired units for heating or vaporizing liquids other than water where these units are separate from processing systems and are complete within themselves. The definition includes water heaters that exceed 200,000 Btu/hr heat input, 200 degrees Fahrenheit at the outlet, or 120 gallons nominal water containing the heating capacity

Classification of boilers:

• According to relative water and hot gases
• According to geometric orientation of boiler
• According to the location of the furnace
• According to the method of water circulation
• According to working pressure
• According to mobility of boiler