As the leader of a company your most important goal should be the progress of the company, but as the business starts to grow, you might face a few problems on the way. There will be a higher demand for your product, and as the demands increase so does inventory. But increasing inventory does not only mean more sales and higher profits. It also requires business expansion, be it moving to a bigger warehouse or implementing a racking system. The latter is by far the easiest, cheapest, and most efficient solution to increased storage capacity.
Pallet racking is in fact a frame shelving system. It implements the pallets on which the stock arrives as a shelving. It’s a convenient way to save on space in your warehouse, without the need to make huge changes. Just because it is cheap, it doesn’t mean that it won’t be a good shelving system. A lot of companies opt for pallet racking because of its many other advantages. Pallet racking offers a lot of safety to anybody working around it because of the durable materials it’s built from. The materials used can withstand all kinds of damages from trucks or forklifts, and they are stable, so no one has to worry that something might fall. A frame shelving system is a very efficient way to make the most of the space available.
There are a few ways in which you can stack with a frame shelving, such as floor stacking, pallet flow rack system, selective, drive-in and push back pallet rack.
- The simplest method of them all is floor stacking since you basically place the pallets in rows on the floor and it is a great way to avoid investing in equipment. However, this will occupy a lot of space on the floor, and you won’t have a lot of access.
- Pallet flow rack systems use cross and upright beams in order to support a gravity roller conveyor that is within the rack. It has a lot of storage density, but it is very expensive.
- The selective pallet rack is one of the most popular ways to store inventory. It is cheap and offers a lot of access to all of the pallets, but it has a low storage density.
- The drive-in system allows for fork trucks to directly drive into the bay. It offers high density, but the rack could get damaged from the fork trucks.
- A push back pallet rack uses a system where the pallets are loaded and unloaded from the front. It only needs one aisle in order to unload or load, but it doesn’t offer a lot of access.