Two ongoing trends have been causing headaches for warehouses utilizing bulk storage or drive-in racking – the first is the move to lighter packaging, and the second relates to ever increasing product types (SKU) with smaller and smaller lot sizes.
With lighter packaging, products that were once able to be stacked 3 or 4 high may now only be able to be stacked two high, or not stacked at all. Facilities that have large sections of bulk storage are finding their height utilization severely restricted, and may end up storing half of what they used to store in a given area.
The increasing number of SKU’s to be stored coupled with smaller lot sizes results in poor occupancy in drive-in systems that were originally configured to handle a few products with potentially hundreds of pallets per item. Some operations have seen their drive-in utilization drop to below 50%, or they have had to mix products in the tunnels which is very inefficient.
Installing a pushback system that has the first beam level at the 9’-10’ mark allows you to store one or two pallets high on the floor with 2, 3 or 4 levels of pushback above (dictated by clear height, pallet height and lift height). The picture below shows a typical configuration in a six deep layout.
The benefits of using Pushback storage include:
- Fully utilizes the height of your facility
- Increases your occupancy versus drive-in or bulk storage
- Significantly increases the number of pick faces, which are suited to smaller lots
- Reduces product damage
- Keeps the fast movers low for increased productivity
- Very economical – this style of rack layout is usually similar in cost to a drive-in system
If you have a poorly utilized drive-in system or can’t use the full height of your facility in bulk storage, give 3D Storage Systems a call to see if we can configure a pushback system that meets your needs and increases your storage.