Are you a business owner with a distribution centre or warehouse and wanting to keep your goods inside it? Of course, you need storage options suitable for your goods. However, there’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all in the storage solution. Many options are available for you and how you want to store your inventory, from stacking palletised products on the floor to rolling shelves and moving aisles.
Today, you will get to know about the storage options that will be ideal for you and your business. Keep reading and find out!
What Is A Warehouse Storage System?
First, we will start with ‘What is a warehouse storage system?’. It is a set of physical structures specially designed to help you optimise how you want to use your warehouse space.
More specifically, the warehouse storage system will ensure that your square footage will be used as efficiently as possible, thanks to their heightened organisation and easy accessibility to all your goodies.
Whenever you decide on or develop a warehouse storage system for running a successful third-party logistics (3PL) warehouse, if implemented properly, these systems will give you a major boost to your warehouse’s efficiency and the support you need to scale well.
Types Of Warehouse Storage Systems:
There are some of the most common warehouse storage systems: Pallet racks, multi-tier racks, static shelving, mobile shelving, and mezzanine flooring. You can read about these storage systems, so selecting storage for your business will get easier. Check them out below:
Pallet Racks:
At most busy warehousing centres, the pallet racks become the centre of the operation. These racking systems are made from various materials. It can be wood, metal, or plastic. No matter what the material is, these racking systems have to hold inventory, which is shipped in large boxes.
Depending on the height of these shipments, all boxes are placed on your pallet racks using forklift automation or another comparable mechanism.
Pallet racking is an umbrella term that has many subcategories under it. Coil racking, cantilever racking, double deep racking, carton flow racking, narrow aisle racking, and push-back racking, to name a few.
Most of the warehouses will pick a style of pallet racking as per their weight limits, adaptability, and whether it requires changing their existing infrastructure.
For some reason, pallet racks are popular at warehouses with a variety of stock-keeping units and where they experience a high volume of product movement or turnover. It is recommended for small-sized or medium-sized storage facilities and for those who are storing bulky products. If you have a business that deals in bulky products, you can get pallet racks for your storage solutions in the warehouse from OZI Racking.
Multi-Tier Racks:
Multi-tier storage racks excel at using vertical space very well. This storage system optimises the height of your warehouse by creating different levels of manual aisles. Your team can easily access it by stairs.
For instance, picking shelves can be coordinated at all different levels and heights. You can increase your warehouse storage capacity while giving your employees easy and direct access to the stock-keeping units.
The uses of multi-tier warehouse racks are quite varied. This storage system is the right choice for large inventory quantities that have small unit sizes. More to this, it goes very well with relatively lightweight products, which are picked and organised manually. These racks are an ideal companion for warehouses that have very limited floor spaces but tons of available height.
Since we know that every warehouse has a unique layout and aesthetic, these racks offer amazing flexibility and the option to add or remove more tiers based on your needs and preferences.
Static Shelving:
Static shelving is what its name suggests – the structures designed to stay put and occupy a place within your warehouse. At the same time, the shelving can hold thousands of pounds. The static shelves are meant for inventory, which is lightweight. For instance, these shelves can hold a few hundred pounds per shelf.
Static shelving is often used for keeping inventory with continuous replenishment cycles. However, static shelving doesn’t go well with forklifts or similar warehouse machinery. Instead, the inventory on these shelves must be picked, packed, or organised by hand.
Mobile Shelving:
Mobile shelving can do wonders for your warehouse. It will optimise your entire warehouse by eliminating individual access aisles. This system uses mobile bases, which will enable access to multiple shelves from a single working aisle. These bases slide laterally over rails directly installed on your floors.
Most of the time, they have incorporated motors or control devices, which will make sure that the shelf movement is safe, smooth, and convenient for your workers.
The main benefit of mobile racking systems is that they reduce the total number of aisles while allowing you to store a more significant number of pallets. They do all this within a limited space without sacrificing direct access to your manually-picked products. Mobile shelving can hold more inventory in a very small space.
These shelves are used in facilities which are operating at any temperature. They are ideal for refrigerated and deep-freeze storage. This is the reason why many food businesses prefer this storage system.
Mezzanine Flooring:
Mezzanine flooring in a warehouse is an elevated, freestanding platform providing an additional floor between the ground and ceiling. These floors are made of metal and are great for increasing storage and working space within your warehouse facility.
In some cases, mezzanine flooring adds a second, third, or even fourth level, constructed above the main warehouse area. However, the intrusive build for this flooring can cost you extra money, for which you need a budget and a warehouse layout for this system.
It might be expensive, but it has tons of potential for customised features like lighting, conveyors, lift systems, etc.
Another great thing about this system is that adding a mezzanine will increase material handling without investing in other buildings or warehouse storage spaces.
Final Thoughts:
If your business is about high-density product storage, then pallet racking will be ideal. Meanwhile, multi-tier racks are the right for businesses with non-palletised goods, bins, cartons, and other small-sized units. On the other hand, mobile shelving is good for food businesses, and mezzanine flooring is the right solution for warehouses that have manual order picking.
This comparison of storage solutions will help you with your business. Warehouse storage systems make it easier for you and let you optimise the warehouse space however you want. These systems can come in handy for many businesses!