A quick analysis will show that many companies find approximately 80% of their sales are generated by approximately 20% of their SKUs.
Now, whilst this may be beneficial for the sales teams, it can cause a number of challenges in the warehouse to achieve the perfect balance of space and picking speed.
Some warehouse managers will resort to block stacking or potentially drive-in racking, however, the traditional approach has been to grin and bear it with pallet racking.
All approaches create a few problems. Health and safety measures are forcing block stacking to be restricted to only 2 or 3 pallets high, preventing the warehouse’s full height.
Drive-in racking causes real challenges with space utilisation, damage to uprights and relatively slow picking speeds.
Pallet racking sacrifices capacity due to the number of FLT aisles required, can result in utilisation issues with half pallets and inevitably cause congestion in picking areas and require areas to be completely shut off to allow the stock to be replenished.
However, Thistle Systems has demonstrated its expertise and experience in integrated storage solutions by developing a highly efficient solution that combines gravity-fed pallet live racking to the bottom level with shuttle racking above.
Thistle’s gravity-fed live system allows operators to have a continual stock of fast-moving SKUs than can be picked from a designated safe and uninterrupted picking zone.
The design means that all forklift activity is carried out from the rear of the system with bulk storage of the full pallets stored above and readily accessible in the shuttle racking.
Full pallets can be quickly brought from the deep storage lanes in the shuttle racking system and either taken directly to the laydown area or placed onto the pallet live system for the picking times to access when required.
Thistle Systems has showcased the approach with one of the UK’s leading food and drink wholesalers, which has transformed the capacity and efficiency of its warehouse thanks to the Max the Cube approach.
The Shuttle Live Picking solution delivers enormous benefits in terms of capacity, efficiency and health and safety.
The system provided 33 Pallet Live Picking Lanes, each seven pallets deep, with an additional four levels of shuttle racking above to provide a total of 924 pallet positions in a fraction of the floor space compared to pallet racking or block stacking.
Picking speeds have been transformed thanks to instant access to all fast-moving SKUs with zero interruptions from forklifts to replenish stocks.
If you operate a busy wholesale warehouse or have fast-moving items that are picked by the case and the pallet, contact Thistle Systems now to discover how the Shuttle Racking Live Picking system could improve your operations.
