This video illustrates the reason why we always advise customers to securely bolt their lockers, racks and shelving to the floor.

We sell loads of shelving all over the country, and one of the persistent issues is the cost of shipping. In particular, that’s an issue for industrial rivet shelving, which is the most economical type of shelving with the highest capacity. It is easily the most popular industrial shelf type going. For many customers, shipping an all inclusive shelving system is the easiest, most convenient thing — we do it all the time.

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This is a good visual comparison of how much space is utilized by various storage methods. The vertical carousel provides the same amount of storage space as several rows of shelving or modular drawer storage. In this particular instance, the carousel saves over 1,400 square feet of floor space when compared to shelving. Of course, you know the cost differences are significant, but there are other factors in making a decision about these types of storage equipment.

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This is a a series of posts we’ll be making about saving space in your facility. There are plenty of ways to better utilize space, and some of them might fit your circumstances while others certainly won’t. In today’s challenging business climate, it is particularly critical to use space wisely in your facility.

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The Material Handling Industry of America recently announced that the RMI (Rack Manufacturers Institute) has certified several manufacturers of wire rack decking “R-Mark” compliant, meaning that these companies have conformed to the Institute’s testing and utilization standards. The industry developed the latest and most comprehensive consensus documents ANSI MH16.1 – 2008 – Specification for the Design, Testing and Utilization of Industrial Steel Storage Racks and MH26.2 – 2007  – Specification for the Design, Testing and Utilization of Welded Wire Rack Decking. Members of RMI voluntarily choose to conform to ANSI MH16.1 – 2008 and MH26.2 – 2007 and any successor document(s).

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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…

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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 really 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…

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You know the pareto concept – 80% of the productivity can come from 20% of the operation. That also applies to floor space in many warehouses and industrial operations.

One easy way to save space in your warehouse is to look for big, open spaces in your rack system. If you have pallet racks but not all of your inventory goes into full pallets, one quick way to save space is to use that rack space for higher productivity activities. Could you move each-pick or case-pick operations off of floor pallets or static shelving into flow storage embedded in your racks?

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Something we often recommend to save space for our clients is modular drawer storage — for certain operations, in particular those with components, assorted small parts, hardware, or even tool storage, we’re talking about recouping 50% -70% of floor space. Once people have ‘em, they love ‘em.

But there is more than one way to skin that cat. You can configure different kinds of cabinets to do different jobs. There are hundreds of possible combinations of drawer styles and sizes. Another wrinkle is what happens when you can merge the drawers with steel shelving. It can be new, it can be some you are already using. It begs the question: when is it better to have a cabinet, and when is it better to use shelving and compartmentalized drawer inserts?

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While there are dozens and dozens of shelving manufacturers and even more variations of trade names for them, there are really just three basic kinds of industrial shelving manufactured and broadly used — Rivet-Type, Steel Clip, and Wire. Of course, there are more variations of these shelving types than you can imagine, but most shelving boils down to these kinds. You can also consider bulk rack as “shelving”, but we have found that heavy duty rivet shelving often fulfills the roles it has typically filled.

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