Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Palletised Storage - An Efficient Storage Solution

By Steve Boland


One of the rising concerns in the management of a manufacturing company, in most cases, is the storage of materials. These materials are required for manufacturing or other related processes, which have to be carried out by the factory itself. The problem of managing the storage sector of the inventory in a company is getting more complex these days, since the amount of the inventory usually varies. The growth of a manufacturing unit in terms of size and in terms of production capacity also adds complexity to the storage of the materials.

Though the conventional storage solutions may help the storage of the inventory for a limited period of time, they are not permanent material-storage solutions! The ideal solution may lie in a pallet-based storage technique. These palletised storage solutions help in offering efficient and cost effective factors to a company's inventory storage management systems.

Before getting into the details, it is better to know the basics of pallets and their related storage facilities. A pallet is a flat storage device that serves efficiently and offers good logistic solutions. Palletised storage is a storage system in which, pallets are extensively used to store products efficiently without spending too much for it, in some cases at no cost at all.

These pallet-based storage solutions were first tried out in the early days of the 20th century. Since then, the palletised storage system has had a great run compared to other conventional storage solutions! The uniqueness of a pallet is that, it is adaptable and has many storage techniques that can be used with its use. This process is actually based on their external factors.

The external factors, when it comes to the palletised storage, include the weight of the load that is being stored. Also the type of the load is considered along with the conditions that exist in the place of storage. Besides these external factors, there are more parameters that have to be observed. The size and dimension of the pallets play an important factor in the storage of the inventory reserves. Also an efficient shape of the pallet is always preferred to save more space in the palletised storage warehouses. Thus, shape of the pallet should also be taken care.

One cannot use the same pallet for different storage systems. Hence, the material with which the pallet is made has to be considered carefully. In some cases, the classical one like the wooden pallet is preferred. But the requirement may change when the storage environment changes and plastic pallets may be the best choice. It is always better to go with the efficient ones. Newer pallets like the white pallets, blue pallets and euro pallets are far more efficient than the older ones. Thus one has to make sure that, you consider both the internal and external factors before choosing the right palletised storage facility.

The storage activities that take place in the pallet-based warehouse systems and in logistics companies include Drive-In Rack, Pallet Flow Rack, Cross Docking, Deep Storage, and Bonded Storage and many such related techniques. These techniques are used with the help of a few efficient operations. These operations consist of Two-tier structures, Bolt free Euro Shelving and other related operations. First, it is necessary to list out the particular technique and operation that is needed for the pallet-based storage. Then, the type of the pallet can be decided after considering the key requirements.

The next step is the usage of techniques and the operations behind the storage. There are various storage techniques that take place in the pallet-based warehouse systems and in logistics. These storage activities include Drive-In Rack, Pallet Flow Rack, Cross Docking, Deep Storage, and Bonded Storage and many related techniques. For large manufacturing ventures, it may look difficult to analyse and calculate the requirements of the palletised storage facility, since they handle huge amount of materials. Expert assistance can be obtained to get the efficient use of palletised storage systems in warehouse storage units. Any logistics company worth its salt will be able to help and keep your costs down too.




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