Pallet racks are frequently subject to abuse, and even the toughest rack will need some cautious handling, processes, guarding equipment, and other help to remain in service. Racks can be overloaded, hit by heavy forklifts, misloaded, and otherwise impacted. Read our quick tips to help you avoid the frustration, expense, and danger of rack damage.
Posted in Pallet & Warehouse Racks|
In an industrial environment, intersections can be dangerous. With fast-moving workers who are busy and probably distracted, and fast-moving forklifts that may have loads elevated that can obstruct the driver’s view, corners, ends of rack rows, and intersections can be the cause of many accidents. Whether it’s a worker walking and carrying a load, or a forklift on its way to the next pick, the chances of collisions, injuries, and damages are greater at intersections than most anywhere else. What are your options when it comes to making your intersections safer?
Tags: ZoneSafe, OSHA, industrial safety, warehouse safety, forklifts, AisleCop, sensors
Posted in Forklift - Pedestrian Safety|
Most distribution and manufacturing operations deal with empty pallets. Sometimes, a lot of them.
Empty pallets take space you could use for something else as they clutter your receiving area. Sometimes they’re splintery, with nails protruding from the sides ready to bite a passerby. People re-use their pallets, holding onto them for a period of time until they’re used for an outbound shipment. But while they’re in your facility, they can eat space, potentially injure people, and generally cause trouble.
Posted in Safety & Ergonomics|
In warehouse & manufacturing operations, things get broken. They break in a number of ways, and it’s expensive. You’ve probably seen product broken or damaged in amazing and improbable ways if you’ve been in this business for any length of time. We had a client once buy a bunch of mismatched, used industrial shelving (not from us), only to see it collapse and dump thousands of tiny aircraft components on the floor. It had to be swept up and discarded since it was all mixed up and visually impossible to sort.
Those are extraordinary examples, but everyday inventory damage that cost “only” a few hundred or thousand dollars can savage your bottom line.
Tags: inventory control, damaged goods, warehousing, customer service, product damage
Posted in Warehousing & Distribution|
Especially in heavy manufacturing, machine shops, petroleum or chemical operations, large bundles of pipe, tubing, bar stock or other long, heavy loads must be stored and picked during the day. Multiple ways are available to store these loads. They can be picked by forklifts, by hand, by hoist or by crane. The choices you make will determine how you access the product (and how easily), how much space it takes and its safety. Here are the options:
In some operations, this is the default method. Sometimes these loads are floor-stored between bollards and a wall, or other obstructions that prevent them from rolling or falling outside the defined storage area. This method is the baseline, and it’s not pretty.
For any significant operation, this is going to slow you down, endanger people and cause inventory damage. It’s acceptable for a very low moving stock that is near to its processing machinery or otherwise in a niche somewhere that isn’t expected to grow.
A good majority of these loads are stored on cantilever rack. Drive around any industrial district and you’ll see cantilever racks holding tube and pipe loads everywhere, and for good reason. It works, it’s relatively inexpensive and it’s durable.
Stacking racks are the most versatile option, but also have severe limitations.
Posted in Pallet & Warehouse Racks|
There isn’t much other way to say it: If you have a forklift, it is almost surely the most dangerous piece of equipment under your roof. If you have many forklifts, that danger us multiplied.
How dangerous? According to OSHA estimates, there are 61,800 minor injuries, 34,900 serious injuries and 85 forklift related deaths in the United States every year. Since there are almost 900,000 forklifts operating at any given point in the United States, this is something that every operation needs to consider when your forklifts start moving on a busy day. 11% of them stand a good chance of being in an accident or collision every single year. Those aren’t great odds, considering that a forklift in a given warehouse is heavy, moving, and in a noisy and often visually crowded environment.
Tags: industrial safety, warehouse safety, Safety & Ergonomics
Posted in Safety & Ergonomics|
Pallet rack storage is relatively inexpensive and extremely common. In many facilities, it also consumes the majority of square footage. When you can cut down on this space, significant gains can be made that allow you to use the square footage for other purposes. Here are some ideas for reducing your rack storage footprint while maintaining storage capacity.
Tags: dock doors, storage density, pallet racks
Posted in Pallet & Warehouse Racks|
One of the more dangerous items that you’ll find at virtually every facility is the humble gas cylinder. In warehouses or manufacturing operations, you’ll find LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) canisters that power gas forklifts. You’ll also find vertical cylinders for welders, cutting torches, or other equipment operations. Too often, you will find them standing against a wall or on the dock with no protection at all.
Tags: security, gas cylinders, LPG tanks, propane tank storage
Posted in Safety & Ergonomics|
The age-old argument of top-versus bottom-driven horizontal carousels comes up all too frequently (at least among carousel people). You may think it doesn’t matter that much but in fact, it makes all the difference in the world. Supporting something from underneath makes sense. After all, trains, cars and most rolling objects are bottom-supported. Yet, the best designed horizontal carousels in the world are top-supported units that outperform bottom-supported units in both speed and efficiency. How can that be?
Posted in Automation, Labor & Efficiency|
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.
Tags: Industrial Shelving, storage, shelving, warehousing
Posted in Storage, Organization & Workstations|
