Since overloading is a common source of pallet rack collapses, (in fact misapplication, including capacity issues, is the top cause) it’s important to understand how much weight your rack – not just your beams – can bear.

For a piece of storage equipment that is relatively simple, ensuring that the rack can hold what you want it to hold is sometimes complex – particularly on very heavy loads, or large but not so heavy loads. This article focuses on upright frame capacities. Beam capacities are pretty simple – they’re listed per pair of beams by most rack sellers, and you just adhere to them with your pallet loads. But frame capacity is not as straightforward as a beam capacity…

Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re in the North Texas area or can easily make the trip, I highly recommend that you attend the North Texas Warehousing Education and Resource Council  “Celebration and Education” seminar on December 10, 2008 in Dallas at the Marriott DFW Airport North.  It’s an excellent day of networking, education and fun. Cisco-Eagle’s Donald Prater is presenting at this session, on the topic “Cargill Excel Beef Case Study – Taking Order Fulfillment to the Next Level.” Donald has implemented multiple facilities for Excel over the years and has keen insights on how to best improve the operations at these kinds of fast-paced, complex operations that you can apply to an operation of almost any kind.

The conference costs $30.

See  our case study on Excel’s innovative order fulfillment project.

Read the rest of this entry »

Hytrol Conveyors has published a free guide to estimating conveyor projects – its innovative “Stockyard Reference Guide.”

The book, which is a short 24-pages, helps you to get ballpark numbers for conveyor projects in a short amount of time. Of course, you can always call us to help you with that kind of thing (and we’ll be more accurate), but this might be faster for you. Not only do you get the cost per foot estimates, there is also some useful information on how to specify, why one conveyor might fit a situation better than others, and more.

The Reference Guide is designed for typical, ball park estimates – enough to help you get started.

Read the rest of this entry »

In a recent Catalog Success magazine, the following facts were reaffirmed: Three areas – picking, packing and returns – take anywhere from 60% to 80% of labor costs in your typical distribution operation. 60% of the average pickers’ time is spent walking. Not picking, not packing, not checking for quality and accuracy – walking. This is an activity that cannot add value to your operation or to your customers, so you should strive to eliminate it whenever possible.

Not only does it waste time, it makes people tired, and tends to cause a loss in focus and can increase error rates.

Here are some ways to go about removing “walk time” from your operation…

Read the rest of this entry »