7 Important Warehouse Pallet Racking Tips to Maximize Productivity

Warehouse management involves lots of planning and is thus a complex task. If not arranged properly, it can reduce the storage capacity of your warehouse and lead to severe losses in the long term. However, if warehouse space optimization is performed effectively and is followed by organized racking techniques, it can certainly increase warehouse space and efficiency. How to do this efficiently. There are a few effective warehouse racking tactics that can do wonders for your warehouse. This post discusses a few warehouse raking tips to organize your warehouse for maximizing productivity.

warehouse pallet racking tips

Easy-to-Follow and Proven Warehouse Racking Tips and Tactics

Warehouse space optimization is a complex process. It requires strategies to enhance efficiency. Especially, for where product incoming and outgoing are frequent. In such cases, poorly stacked warehouses can cause accidents. The following warehouse racking tactics and tips would help you optimize the space efficiently.

  1. Analyze Product Circulation Rate: To organize your warehouse for higher productivity, you must know the product circulation rate. It involves keeping records of the number of products stacked on racks, duration of each products’ stay, and time of withdrawal. Once this is done, you get a pattern of which product stays for long and which one is withdrawn early. This way by considering product circulation rate, you can stack demanded product to easy access rack and vice versa.
  2. Implement Suitable Pallet Stacking Mechanism: According to the product circulation rate, you must choose the pallet staking mechanism. It is generally known as the Warehouse Management System (WMS). You can go for First-In-First-Out (FIFO) or Last-In-First-Out (LIFO) techniques. If your product life cycle is less or demand is high, then LIFO should be adopted. If the storage of products is long term the FIFO can be adopted.
  3. Increase Vertical Racking Space: Stacking in vertical storage can help make optimum use of warehouse square footage. This saves room space and the installation of spare units is not required in this case. The vertical storage also ensures clear visibility of products. Along with this, forklifts can travel at great speed vertically since there is no obstacle, it also increases productivity. In modern warehouse storage solutions, multi-level rack structures are popular. These warehouse designs are 20-30 feet tall. They offer varying infrastructure for a different size and types of products and allow effective automatic storage support.
  4. Increase Aisle Spacing: Increasing aisle spacing increases visibility. Distance between two aisles is generally the traveling distance for forklift. Due to decluttered and spacious traveling route, the operator can move the forklift easily through the passage. Effective operation increases productivity.
  5. Adopt Deep Lane Shuttle/Pallet Racking Techniques: Deep lane storage stacking is a technique that involves stacking the products in the pallet and then pushing them at the bottom by using gravity or truck lifts. This technique is often implemented in a shuttle pallet rack mechanism to enhance storage space.
  6. Opt for Mobile Pallet Racking Systems: Mobile pallet racking systems feature vehicle pallets that slid to a safe space after stacking. These systems help saving aisle spacing. Therefore, it can literally double your storage space and productivity too.
  7. Time-Specific Storage Operation: To make the operation more productive, the operator can vary the speed of shuttle and pallet travel time accordingly. This means, if the activity is to be performed urgently, then pallet speed is high, otherwise speed is reduced. This ensures that pallet rack stacking operation is done in the available time. According to the total storage time, the activity speed varies which enhances the efficiency of the storage operation. However, the operator can only raise the speed up to a certain limit due to safety concerns.

Bonus Tip: 

Invest in Rack Protection: “Money invested in safety is money earned in productivity” is a saying in the industrial world. You must invest in rack protection systems to avoid any accidental damage. Due to the protection, any error-centered loss can be saved and productivity can be increased.

Now that all the pallet racking tricks are detailed, you must consider sourcing these warehouse racks from a trusted manufacturer. SPS Ideal Solutions is a recognized warehouse rack manufacturer and supplier. Made of stainless steel and durable materials, their industrial rack solutions can be a boost to your warehouse productivity.

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