Pallet Racking Systems – How do I organise my warehouse?

Organising a warehouse is not the sort of thing you do every day. Most people are only likely to need to do this very few times in the course of their life – maybe when setting up a business or when taking on new product lines in an established business – so it is not something that you would necessarily think about often.

When the need to organise a warehouse arises, however, how would you go about it?

Probably the first thing to do is to look at the items you are looking to store, and consider the best way of handling them. Are the goods of a uniform or irregular size and shape? How much do they weigh? How easily are they handled? Hopefully, you will be able to take advantage of the benefits of palletised storage, among which are:

• Pallets provide a simple method of storing goods that maximises the available space
• Pallets speed up the loading and unloading of vehicles – usually using a fork lift truck.
• The use of pallets in shipping and storage tends to be less labour intensive than other methods

You will need to consider the stock handling system you are going to operate, in order to plan the best places to locate your various products and the access to them. Will you be handling small quantities of goods, or bulk quantities? What method of stock rotation will you use?

All this plays into your consideration of the size of the pallets you are going to use, and that in turn determines the depth of racking that you need. The normal standard sizes are 800mm wide x 1200mm deep or 1200mm wide x 1000mm deep. Obviously, each of these different sizes will necessitate a different depth of bay, but you will also need to bear in mind that the decision you make regarding pallet depth must take account of the extent of pallet overhang and the sensible distribution of weight.

It is important that your pallet racking system enables you to handle your stock easily and efficiently, but at the same time that any safety issues are addressed. Consideration must be given to issues such as the maximum loadings in terms of the number of pallets that you can have between each pair of beams, as well as the width of aisles that is needed to facilitate safe and easy handling of pallets.

You will need to consider the height of your racking. You will probably want to build your racking as high as possible, in order to store the maximum amount of goods, but this will obviously be limited by the height of the building. You also have a number of other things to think about, for example:

• How high can the racking be erected before it becomes unstable?
• How high can your fork trucks reach in safety?

By now you may be feeling a little intimidated by the number of different things you need to take into account in organising your warehouse. Fear not! Here at Pallet Racking Systems we have a team of experts who are able to provide invaluable help and advice to enable you to make informed decisions about your warehouse project, and supply your pallet racking needs – either in new or second hand pallet racking. Why not give us a call on 01902 606205?