Scott Stone | Warehousing Insights | Material Handling Systems - Part 37
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Storage Efficiency: Shelves vs. Modular Drawers vs. Flow vs. Vertical Carousels

June 3, 2009
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Illustration comparing vertical carousels, shelving and modular drawers for storage density and space efficiency.

Storage systems are designed for different goals, but space efficiency is always important for growing and evolving warehouses and manufacturing facilities. Which storage equipment suits you, your application, product and needs?

Above: a visual comparison of space utilization featuring various methods. The vertical carousel provides the same amount of storage space as several rows of shelving or modular drawer storage. In this instance, the carousel saves over 1,400 square feet of floor space compared to shelving. Flow racks also compare favorably to shelving in terms of space utilization.

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Posted in Space Optimization & Planning|

Staged Shipments at Risk for Pilferage

May 25, 2009
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Receiving dock with staged shipments and open dock doors in a warehouse.

When things are staged at the dock, whether inbound or scheduled to be picked up, they’re particularly at risk for pilferage.

Any operation that stores, ships or receives valuable items is at risk of being hit – or is already being hit to some degree.  Thieves working at a shipping dock may simply wait until after a supervisor finished checking outbound shipments and add more to them before they depart. Since the shipments can sit on the docks for 90 minutes or more, pilferers have time to work on this. And it’s extremely difficult to detect. When thieves place extra cases onto staged pallets and those can ship out on trucks driven by colluding drivers.

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Posted in Security|

What’s the Most Useless Space in your Warehouse?

May 20, 2009
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storage above a warehouse dock door area

Next time you’re standing there wondering where you’re going to put an inbound shipment while your dock is stacked with empty pallets, look at those doors (or at the void above them)  —  the copious space between the top of the doors and the ceiling is unused. Multiply each door by that amount of space, and in many operations, we’re talking serious amounts of unused square footage.

The easy solution: find a use for it with over-dock-door storage. You can’t really rack heavy stuff up there without some significant structure. The best thing to consider is empty pallets, which take up a ton of room and are relatively lightweight. And usually, they’re all over the floor and always in your way. Empty pallets clutter up the shipping & receiving docks or can take up positions in your racks that would be better suited to full pallets of finished goods or incoming shipments.

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Posted in Space Optimization & Planning|

Gravity Conveyor: How Many Skatewheels do You Need?

March 6, 2009
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Warehouse

Gravity skate wheel conveyor is probably the most economical conveyor option around for quick, portable movement of lightweight boxes, totes, or trays.

You see it used in shipping & receiving areas, in assembly operations, or as a transitional piece between workstations and powered conveyor lines. You can even slap casters on it for a conveyor that can be rolled in & out of use areas. We even plug it into gravity flow racks to create heavier-duty, FIFO flow storage.

For such a simple piece of conveying equipment — in fact the simplest — errors can and do crop up when it’s ordered incorrectly.

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Posted in Conveyor Optimization|

Warehouse Space Savings: Consolidate from Shelf Bins into Modular Storage

February 14, 2009
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shelving system with modular drawers

This is 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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Posted in Space Optimization & Planning|

10 Questions: Vertical Reciprocating Conveyor Specification

September 23, 2008
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vertical conveyors of several types

A few months ago, we posted a Guide to Vertical Reciprocating Conveyors (you might find it useful if you’re looking at any application that moves a load up and down at least one level integrated with a shaft, mezzanine or other area). That guide includes the following questions, should be helpful as you move ahead with your project.

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Posted in Lifting & Lift Systems|

More Pallet Rack Safety Tips

September 9, 2008
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Row of pallet rack storage

Safety in warehouses tends to be greatly about the interactions between forklifts, pallet racks, people and stored products. This list of rack safety tips is part of our ongoing efforts to help warehouses operate safely and efficiently.

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Posted in Pallet & Warehouse Racks|

How to Minimize Forklift Impacts on Pallet Racks

July 3, 2008
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Pallet rack and forklift in a warehouse

Pallet racks take a beating over time. They get loaded with exceptionally heavy pallets, by exceptionally powerful lift trucks over and over throughout the course of years. Chances are that if you have pallet rack in your warehouse, it’ll get hit at some point. When it does, inspecting (and generally replacing) it is your best course of action. But what about avoiding that hit, or its dangerous aftermaths in the first place?

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Posted in Pallet & Warehouse Racks|

Comparing Pallet Rack Guards: Flexible Netting vs. Wire Mesh Panels

May 19, 2008
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men working in a warehouse rack aisle

Unguarded rack is dangerous if there are people working in the aisles below. Safety managers know this, insurance companies know it, and if you have rack in your facility, you probably know it too. You have probably seen pallets break. You’ve seen drivers make mistakes when loading & unloading. We’ve seen things fall. If you’ve been in the business any length of time, you may have walked into your warehouse in the morning to find a case of something from the fourth level split open on the floor.

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Posted in Pallet & Warehouse Racks|

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