Selective Rack Relocation Case Study

Scope:

A company that sells office furniture was moving operations and required its current system to be removed and reinstalled in the new facility. Since their new facility was larger, the company also needed to add on a new system to accommodate its expansion.

Solution:

The company chose REB for this project because it was ideal for them to work with one provider for both phases of the project: the removal and reinstallation of the current system and installation of the new system.

The first phase included the removal of the current system and relocating to the new facility. REB was tasked with dismantling the system, packaging all components and arranging for safe transportation of the system to the new facility. This rack was then reinstalled at the new facility, but the layout design was modified to incorporate its new selective rack system.

The second phase was REB designing the new selective rack system to accommodate the company’s expansion in the new facility. The new system consisted of 440 bays of 42” and 44” deep pallet racking outfitted with wire deck to provide high accessibility of the company’s inventory.

How to Select the Ideal Warehouse Picking Cart

Warehouse picking carts can be integrated into any warehouse or backroom operation to serve as a faster method for picking, stocking or transporting inventory. They are also a great way to utilize unused space and make maneuvering in confined spaces, like aisles, easier.

Inventory Characteristics to Evaluate

What items are you storing? What are their weight, shape, and size?

It’s very important that your warehouse picking carts can adequately house and transport your products. Most picking carts have a capacity between 1,200 lbs. and 3,600 lbs. and, depending on the number of shelves, have an average clearance between 11” and 17”. It’s important to keep this in mind while searching for a picking cart if your products are heavier and/or larger.

If you require carts to transport multiple SKUs at once, consider ones with multiple shelf levels. These are often used in retail and food and beverage operations. This will add more storage density per cart and provide for faster product accessibility.

How do you want to store and pick these items? How will your inventory need to be accessed? Do you have high or low product circulation?

In addition to having the ability to transport your items, carts must also provide the proper accessibility for your application. This is an important element to consider because it can speed up the rate of which things are shipped.

Open frame picking carts allow access to products from all four sides. This option provides the best product accessibility and can benefit operations with high product circulation. Two-sided carts allow access from both the long sides of the cart. Three-sided carts only allow products to enter and exit from one side, providing the least accessibility but safeguards inventory to prevent damage or spillage.

As you’ll read about further in this article, warehouse picking carts can also be outfitted with compartments, typically via bins, to organize SKUs or distinguish between shipments.

When to Implement Warehouse Automation

Does your current warehouse or distribution center have an order fulfillment process that requires repetitive time-consuming or task-oriented processes? What about lengthy walking distances for order pickers to retrieve orders? If this sounds like your current warehouse, it may be time to consider implementing automation.

Automation aids in warehouse optimization. Automation not only increases picking accuracy but also frees up workers from those repetitive tasks which can improve employee productivity.

How to Evaluate if Your Operation Will Benefit from Automation

Effectively adding automation into your warehouse or distribution center starts with an analysis of your product storage and picking and staging characteristics.

When deciding if automation is right for you, it’s crucial to calculate your warehouse’s inventory, processes, and growth levels by SKU. Identifying certain characteristics of your inventory and processes will allow you to pinpoint where in your operation that could benefit from a faster, more automated process.

Things to be considered include:

• Do the products require special material handling equipment operated by an employee? If so, automation can speed up the handling of these products and free up that employee for other functions within the distribution center.
• Does your inventory require separate picking and staging zones because of varying weight and shape? These areas can be separate but should work together harmoniously. If there’s a lag in one of these areas, including the ‘in-between’ area of getting the products from picking to staging, then you are wasting valuable time and energy. Adding automation can make a dramatic difference in this case.
• Would you benefit from increased order accuracy? Using automated picking systems, you may see pick rates improve over 30% as well as an impressive reduction in picking errors of up to 60%.
• Do your employees spend a large amount of time simply traveling to and from pick locations? Automated systems, including good-to-person solutions, can dramatically increase pick rates by bringing the product to them vs. them traveling to the pick location.

INDUSTRIAL STEEL RACKING: AN INTRODUCTION TO STORAGE SYSTEMS (I)

When we talk about storage we refer to a set of processes aimed to store and preserve our stock in an optimize condition, ready to use, that span from the moment the goods are produced to the moment those goods are requested by our customers. Industrial racking provides the necessary equipment to receive, store and ship raw materials, in-process products, and finished goods. Needless to say, that depending on the type of the material to be stored, the racking specification, as well as the handling technology, may vary.

As a preliminary step to the design of the storage system and industrial racking, it is necessary to consider the specification of the materials to be stored, like dimensions, weight, durability or economic aspects.