If you currently have a pallet racking system and are looking to provide a boost to your business operations through some improvements, some products will help to maximise your warehouse efficiency, organisation and density for storage.
For many businesses, the start of Spring sees a hike in busy activity and some products tend to get larger due to the upcoming holiday season of summer on the horizon.
This is where your pallet racking can suddenly become overloaded with a mixture of various sized products struggling to find the right amount of space, leaving some items hanging over your aisle entrances and exits.
By switching smaller stock away from your pallet racking and into a section filled with commercial shelving Manchester, you can make good use of the excess space for the larger bulk items whilst smaller pick items are conveniently stored in a separate section for easy picking.
Safety barriers are an important addition to your warehouse operations at any time of the year, but during the busiest periods, they are key to preventing a lot more accidents and injuries from occurring during the seasonal rush.
Training when it comes to elevated safety during the busy period and ensuring that all staff know of extra security and safety measures when working in the warehouse always needs a seasonal refresher, not just for new starters but also for experienced workers.
Extra warehouse space and organization can be achieved through the implementation of mezzanine flooring, especially if you require a lot more room and don’t want to shift your entire operation into a bigger complex.
Having an expert installer measure your warehouse dimensions and requirements ensures that no mistakes are made and every avenue to accentuate your space is taken into account.
Ensuring that your warehouse pallet racking system is operating safely is vitally important, and requires regular safety inspections – not just after an incident has taken place.
Under current legislation, inspections of racking systems should be undertaken by a technically competent individual every 12 months to ascertain if any risks are present and need fixing or replacing. This type of inspection not only assesses where the identifiable damage is, but where potential future hazards will present themselves.
Contact the team at Monarch Shelving today to ensure that all avenues with regard to your warehouse efficiency and operation improvements are done by professionals and with strict guidelines for safety and practicality.
If pallet rack installation is done incorrectly, or in the event of a forklift collision, the racking is affected to the point where it cannot competently hold its rated capacity. It may look stable, but even so much as a minor impact could result in the entire system crashing to the ground.
Some signs show it is time for a thorough inspection and possible replacement of your industrial storage racks.
When racks are not level or if they are leaning vertically, it is a very bad sign of things to come. Crooked racks were either installed incorrectly or have been offset by a collision. In other cases, if installed many years prior, the foundation may have settled and that is resulting in a skewering of the rack.
No matter what has happened, if they are out of alignment then they are structurally unstable to the point where a minor impact can result in a total collapse.
Dents or bends are a sign that the overall structure has been compromised and is in demand to be replaced immediately. If beams are not secured to the uprights, a locking mechanism is missing or bent – then that section is majorly unsafe.
If a forklift was to collide with this racking, the beam will tear away from the upright and all of your stored products will tumble off and end up as a write-off – potentially injuring members of your workforce at the same time. Missing clips and attachment pins are common when purchasing used pallet racking, so be sure to invest in pallet racking that is new and comes with all parts required.
Sometimes a forklift operator will simply forget to inform you if there has been even a slight collision, which is exactly why third party periodic racking inspections are essential.
Forklift collisions not only compromise the integrity of your warehouse storage equipment but also put it on a path with a disaster just waiting to happen. Significant dents or scrapes on column protectors are telltale signs that a forklift collision has occurred, and staff members will need to be constantly in training to identify the seriousness of any impact that could compromise your operations – even if it is just a little dent.
If you are not sure when the last time you had your pallet racking inspected, it may be a sign that it has not been conducted for a long period.
Contact the team at Monarch Shelving today for all pallet racking, pallet rack installation, and commercial shelving enquiries.
In instances where full pallet racking systems collapse, the damage can be hundreds of thousands of pounds to stock, equipment and employee health. On top of that, business productivity will grind to a halt in the time it takes to repair the damage and replenish the stock.
In the majority of cases, pallet racking collapse is entirely preventable and most of the time happen as a result of either bad practice, poor quality racking or improper safety training of staff. Some measures can be put in place to prevent racking collapse and the risks associated with them.
As well as an immediate risk towards life, racking collapses show considerable risk towards business and operations.
Severe injuries to work personnel are the worst-case scenario to collapse incidents, but there is the very real risk of fatalities from the incident as well. This is the ultimate cost to a business not just in a financial settlement negligence case, but the reputation of the business will forever be tarnished or completely dead in the water.
On top of this is the fines imposed by regulatory bodies for failure to keep work equipment in a safe and well-maintained working order. These fines can be extremely high and can even lead to prosecution.
Destruction of stock, company downtime and overall loss of business contracts all follow suit as extremely costly to your business – which you may struggle to recover from in business and financially moving forward.
As well as the increased risk of industrial storage racks failing on their own, damaged or poorly maintained racking can be caused by simple forklift collisions or overloading of the units above.
The best way to prevent these is to carry out regular visual inspections of the racking for any sign of damage or overloading and have every employee who has an incident report it immediately. You can even employ an approved racking inspector to provide a full report on damages. Whenever damage is reported, it is advisable to avoid this racing until it has been fully repaired.
As the most common cause of pallet racking collapse, the risk of forklift collision can be greatly reduced by designing systems with adequate space between racks and the installation of column guards, upright protectors and racking barriers.
Up to date training with all workers including forklift drivers should be undergone regularly as well as updating safety practices whenever anything new is implemented in the warehouse.
If you are responsible for pallet racking systems within your warehouse, you need to ensure that the system is well maintained, inspected and trained around to make sure the risk of pallet collapse is minimal.
Contact the team at Monarch Shelving today for all industrial storage racks and warehouse storage equipment enquiries.
Small warehouses with large amounts of inventory are faced with daily struggles, and pallet racking is classed as the most ideal solution to effectively maximise space potential. pallet racking is ideal for a large array of markets – from retail to manufacturing – and is designed to store high volumes and high-density bulk inventory. When purchasing and installing your racking, there are some considerations to run alongside to determine your pallet racking height.
Pallet racking systems are the fundamental component for an efficient and operational warehouse, enabling you to better organise space and have a huge impact on productivity for your business.
Pallet racking is essentially structural support for your day to day operations, consisting of upright steel frames connected by horizontal steel beams allowing for pallets to rest between the upright frames. Generally divided into two broad categories, low-density systems allow easy access to products whilst high-density systems makes better use of space with limited access to stored products.
As a business owner, you will naturally want to squeeze as many pallets as possible into your allocated space whilst still operating at maximum efficiency, but you need to do so following safety at all times.
Thinking that the higher you can stack – the more space you are saving is a positive thought, but how high can you build it? With pallet racking, you can go pretty high, but you will have to consider the practical restrictions you will face which enforce limits.
The size of your building is the most prominent one and is something you will have to be aware of when selecting your pallet racking height, especially when encompassing a space that does not offer the same functionality as a warehouse.
Your biggest limitation will probably come down to the reach of your forklift and machinery. Something that needs to reach a height of 30ft will no doubt cost much more to purchase than one that is simply required to reach 10-15ft.
The loading capacities of your racking system also are a major factor to take into consideration, so discussing with an installer beforehand the various products you are looking to stock makes specifying your requirements a lot simpler.
If your top shelves are planned to hold stock that needs to be accessed every day, it probably is not suitable to be situated up high and cause a hold-up whilst operators have to manoeuvre to get it down to floor level.
If you are looking for the perfect solution for your warehouse storage equipment, contact the team at Monarch Shelving today.
What is pallet racking?
Shelving requirements for your warehouse can seem like a straightforward task but at the same time seem unnecessarily complicated. Trying to decide on what warehouse storage equipment is right for your needs can be a headache with the immense amount of different names for the same product and styles available.
At the end of the day, you want to know that the system you require do the main things that are demanded from it – stock your inventory safely, be easily navigable and serve your company operation.
Pallet racking is a storage system that securely stores pallets of materials on rows of metal shelving. These systems can store on multiple levels of shelving that can be accessed by forklifts, whilst increasing storage density by utilising vertical space.
Due to its long array of styles and sizes, pallet racking is viewed as the most flexible storage option for your warehouse composed of two main parts – upright frames and cross beams. Upright frames are vertical columns that run from the floor to the top shelf of your system. The upright frame incorporates a series of holes that allow for the changing of shelf size depending on your requirements.
The cross beams connect to the upright frame on both ends to create a shelf for pallets and materials to be safely stored. It takes two cross beams to make a shelf.
Aside from maximising your available storage space, warehouse pallet racking systems offer other benefits to your business operations.
These benefits can be quantified in economic value or savings from leasing additional storage space requirements, less manpower effort, and higher throughput. Racking takes advantage of available vertical space that would be unused in other cases, allowing for a greater volume of stock to be available.
Racks can also be addressed easily in comparison to stockpiling. Selective racking systems allow for the storing of different types of stock whilst keeping consumed space to a minimum. Racking systems are also designed to contain goods without damaging them, meaning there is no need to remove goods over time to allow for access to buried goods in a stockpile – resulting in less damage from less contact.
With this level of organization, your employees can provide more productivity by not being held up or lost for the stock – having everything easy to find and organized.
What is pallet racking? Pallet racking is the smart choice for businesses where organization and operations are of the highest priority. Contact the team at Monarch Shelving today for all your pallet racking and industrial storage racks needs.
The first consideration under why you need pallet racking or warehouse racking is vitally important in terms of maximising two areas – the space you use and the efficiency of the operations within your warehouse.
With both in mind, most businesses understand that combining both of these areas requires specific solutions to plan out the right solution. This can result in standard operations such as pallet racking and cantilever racking along with more specialised variations such as custom based racking or commercial shelving solutions.
If you are a business that needs to store large items over prolonged periods or a high turnover of smaller goods coming in and out regularly, planning stages of warehouse storage equipment is extremely important to get right from the very beginning – regardless of how things may change season to season.
If you own or run a warehouse, you are in the seat to conclude strategic planning and long-term targets. If you are planning to revamp your existing racking or start from a fresh floor, you must consult with a specialist to maximise your available space and the kind of system that can best utilise it.
If you are installing racking from scratch, input from as many parties – from workers to specialists – help fill out a wider picture of strategy and practicality in the system design.
How your warehouse operates with regards to workflow plays the most important factor in the racking and storage solution you make a final decision on.
This falls into the size and type of goods stored and the speed at which individual items come and go throughout the warehouse. Looking at whether bulk storage is more important than accessibility and the ability to pick items from racking at speed – or whether both need to be combined to account for workflow alternations.
Calculating the lengths and depths of storage using the information on the type, size and precise movements of those items flowing through the warehouse helps to determine the best course of action in terms of the storage solutions you choose.
Whilst your first calculation will be on the square footage of floor space available for a pallet racking system, ignoring the potential for utilising space in vertical space can be a costly mistake to not have upfront.
Installing higher racking will impact the load the warehouse floor expects to bear and the stability of a regular racking system, but considering this upfront with reinforced racking systems or mezzanine flooring opens up a whole new level of storage potential.
Contact the team at Monarch Shelving today for the ultimate storage solutions from industrial storage racks to commercial shelving and warehouse racking.
Pallet racking is warehouse storage equipment designed to hold pallets in horizontal rows over multiple levels. Commercial pallet racks are storage solution that offers many advantages for a business that operates an efficient warehouse and distribution centre.
pallet racking is the best-known option for maximising available space within your warehouse to adequately store larger amounts of stock for picking and distribution, making the entire process operate at its most productive and stress-free.
Pallet racking is the perfect option for holding larger amounts of stock neatly and safely, helping your business to withstand customer demand and festive season rushes.
Pallet racking is constructed in various ways to keep products organised and stored to maximise the space productively.
Racking units are constructed from vertical steel frames connected with horizontal steel beams. Two frames and the beam create a bay area where pallets can be added and stored for the long term. The number of pallets that can be held on the racking system and their weight depends on the height and spacing of the system.
Heavy-duty frames typically have adjustable levels to suit storage requirements and can hold upwards of 3000kg UDL.
Industrial storage racks come in many different types suitable for specific needs. Deciding on which one is suitable comes down to communication on its use with the supplier, who can best advise on the type of system that suits.
Mobile racking systems are racks on a mobile base that can be guided through flooring tracks. Drive-through racking is built for high-density storage and maximum storage space through storing pallets back-to-back and floor-to-floor.
Push back racking allows you to store product that spans 2-5 pallets and wide aisle racking is adjustable and versatile to allow access to pallets without specialist equipment. There is also flow racking that allows for pallets to be loaded at the higher end and unloaded at the lower end, making the rotation of products automatic.
Depending on a few factors, the kind of pallet racking that you require will come down to available floor space, ceiling height, pallet types, size and cost of the system overall.
You will also have to take into consideration the frequencies of stock turnaround to better maximise the investment into pallet racking for your business. The biggest element is also the safety of your warehouse staff, who will also need to undergo safety training around the system regularly.
All of these require a system designed to high standards by the team at Monarch Shelving. Contact the team today to discuss your requirements for commercial pallet racks.
Pallet racking is also known as warehouse storage systems. This is where one bay consists of two uprights and two beam levels. When put together, it creates a large space for the storage of stock and materials on pallets.
Pallet racking systems are classed as the number one solution for warehouse operation, able to stack vertically to accentuate even more stock than regular warehouse shelving can accommodate. This allows warehouses to store a lot of stock reaching up to the roof of the warehouse where forklift operation can easily access them.
Racking solutions are there to create organization within a businesses operation, allowing for quick and easy access to products by storing them across a multitude of aisles.
A bespoke system for your business can be built to store a large range of bulkier and smaller items, able to separate them both. This allows for faster shipping items to closer to floor level whilst slower shipping items can be specially stored up high out of the way until they are required.
Racking is utilised in many businesses for many different reasons. Businesses such as warehouse and manufacturing, distribution centres, grow rooms, retail and grocery stores all have implemented racking systems for various uses, but they all share the same purpose – keeping stock organized and accessible.
How much racking is required for your warehouse depends on how much stock you plan to hold.
Some businesses utilise a mixture of pallet racking and other warehouse storage equipment to get the best use of space. A business would usually calculate the amount of room and how many pallets they would need to store to get a broad outline of the kind of system right for their needs. Away from industrial storage racks, smaller items could be stored via the use of commercial shelving units in a far corner of the warehouse or its designated area.
The ability to have break-out rooms that hold smaller items that typically get mixed in with much bulkier items of stock means that commercial shelving plays a much more satisfactory part in warehouse operations. Pallet racking goes by other names, simply as a bay or unit – but all of them are the same product. They come in all shapes and sizes and not every one of them is suitable for your business – which is why you need to talk to experts in the field of racking solutions.
In regards to the many different types of warehouse storage systems, talking with a specialist underlines your warehouse requirements and is the most beneficial for your storage needs. Contact the team at Monarch Shelving today.
All pallet racking systems are typically designed and installed by experts in warehouse storage equipment but, once installed and in everyday use, ensuring the system is safe and free from damage is a job that needs to be taken on by yourself through inspection and maintenance.
Too many times in warehouse operations damage is often seen and ignored, and typically goes unreported. This poses a significant risk on its continued carrying capacity and potential full failure – resulting in a full system collapse causing hundreds of thousands in damage and potential injury or fatality to your employees.
It sounds like a worst-case scenario, but it happens more times than you think.
You have all seen those Youtube videos where a full collapse of a warehouse set-up has happened from a forklift collision – well, that is possibly due to a weakened infrastructure that could have been avoided by having a dedicated and competent person responsible for inspecting racking safety.
In an ideal world, every warehouse with racking systems installed will have a weekly visual inspection by an individual who can identify and determine any faults or risks. These inspections require a proper recording to cover everyone and identify and rectify problems before they lead to catastrophe.
Racking systems are typically manufactured from lightweight materials and, as a result, have a limit to how much abuse they can withstand. Forklift drivers and their skill level have a great bearing on the amount of damage that can likely be caused to pallet racking – with any damage caused to reduce the load capacity and make its overall strength weaker by comparison.
To ensure your system retains its serviceable standard and remain safe, it needs a regular inspection to take into account the frequency and method of operation as well as the dimensions of the area used, along with the equipment and personnel involved.
As soon as any safety problem or damage is witnessed or identified by any employee, it should be immediately reported via a system you should have in place for reporting damage and defects.
All employees within the working area should receive training, information and instructions on the safe operation of your racking system, including on parts affecting their safety and the safety of others within the area.
Inspection and maintenance to the structure and its condition should be performed weekly or at regular intervals based on a risk assessment. In all cases, a formal written record will need to be conducted complete with any observations or proposals for action to be taken to keep the system in a safe condition.
For more information on pallet racking systems and industrial storage racks, contact the team at Monarch Shelving today.
If you are currently in the throes of preparing for a full warehouse installation, it can feel quite intimidating to begin the process for a successful install. There are many things you need to consider other than just simply placing your items on a rack and getting operations on the go. You need to work on your full warehouse organization through many little things to big things, such as industrial pallet racks to hooks, ensuring none go unnoticed or unaccounted for.
In the long run, going step by step is going to save you a lot of time and money, and they don’t need to be expensive to implement either. When preparing your warehouse space for a pallet racking system, there are important steps to undertake.
Each aspect of your warehouse needs to be analysed to access the effectiveness of each part and as a whole to detect where your problems will lie. The first step in designing your installation is always going to come down to devising your layout.
Over time your layout will no doubt come into contact with disorganization in the form of new efficiency issues and safety risks. By overlooking how your everyday operations are mapped out in each area, you can strategically reorganize to make space improvements and make the most out of your warehouse storage equipment.
In undertaking this step, you can make the most of available space, reduce goods handling and provide much more access that is clear, as well as be able to control the amount of stock being held.
One of the biggest planning you can do is to practice inventory management which goes a long way towards preventing real problems. By checking that you hold the correct amount of stock at all times, you ensure that your system not only has the appropriate capacity but also saves you on ordering excess stock.
You can also utilise inventory management software that provides real-time analysis of stock sitting around your warehouse. This goes a long way towards reducing any overstocking or under-ordering and gives a more accurate level of stock held.
A system that is easy on the budget is not necessarily a wise investment. One size does not necessarily fit all, and various forms of pallet racking may be better suited upon conversing with a professional.
Delving into your intended stock of either large, bulkier items or those that require forklift operation, in comparison to smaller box items that could probably be stored on more commercial shelving is a big difference maker not just on operations, but also on your budget.
For all storage racks, industrial pallet racks, and enquiries, contact the team at Monarch Shelving today.
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Monarch Shelving Ltd
Unit F,Daltry Street, Oldham,
Lancashire, United KingdomOL1 4AB
Tel: 0161 627 3444 or 0161 622 0022
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