Shuttle Racking Transforms Block Stacking Warehouse

Shuttle Racking Transforms Capacity and Efficiency

The investment will not only increase storage capacity in the warehouse by over 75%, but the move will also dramatically reduce operational costs, improve space utilisation and reduce third party storage requirements.

The company had been using third party storage for a number of years and were looking at long term solutions to reduce costs and improve efficiency.

Working closely with Thistle Systems’ semi-automated storage specialists, the dedicated project team arrived at a solution that could store 3563 pallets in the same floor space – that’s an additional 1500 pallets.

However, the increased capacity is only part of the full range of benefits the semi-automated solution will bring to the warehouse.

Thistle Systems’ highly experienced designed team developed the solution to provide in excess of 400 pick faces to meet the expected number of SKUs.

This was achieved using a combination of depths of shuttle racking depending on stock levels with different blocks using First In First Out (FIFO) & First In Last Out (FILO) systems to provide the correct levels of stock and SKUs throughout the facility.

The semi-automated shuttles will also dramatically reduce travel times and loading times and improve picking speeds by doing most of the work in the system. This will reduce the number of FLTs required to achieve the same throughput.

The shuttles automatic shuffling process, which pulls all stock forward, enabling additional stock in the FIFO system to be stored behind, will dramatically improve space utilisation and virtually eliminate the need to move pallets continually.

The FILO shuttle racking block enables them to manage stock by date more effectively whilst improving the picking process during peak periods.

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What we did

• Shuttle racking replaces block stacking to create 3563 pallet positions
• Additional 1500 Pallets stored in same floor space
• Combination of FILO and FIFO racking systems
• 3 separate blocks of shuttle racking
• Over 400 pick faces to suit SKU profile
• 4 shuttles to maximise efficiency
• Dramatically reduces travel times and picking time
• Dramatically reduces damage to packaging and products caused by block stacking