I think teams might be writing this off to easily. There are many kinds of suction devices which are used in the manufacturing industries. I would like to point you all to this one site which I found doing an easy google search and I am sure there are plenty of other things like this.
http://www.anver.com/document/company/vacuum_cups.htm
I am not saying suction is a good solution I just think that there are ways to make it work.