Commercial shelving is an incredibly versatile and effective way of getting additional storage that does not clog up your available space in a warehouse. Many business owners do not understand the benefits this warehouse storage equipment provides or the difference it makes for both storage and staff productivity.
If you need to store small to medium-sized products within a warehouse – commercial shelving is the perfect solution. This shelving is a specialist piece of equipment that effortlessly holds hand-picked items in boxes, drums and larger cartons to keep them from getting mixed up and damaged with your larger pallet racking stock.
It is available in a wide range of heights, widths and depths and made from steel decking, mesh or chipboard – or a combination of either to suit specific warehouse requirements.
Some items are not practical for occupying pallet racking in your main warehouse space – but they find a more suitable home on commercial shelving. Items with odd shapes, extreme fragility or of bulkier dimensions are not always movable by forklift or conveyor belts, as well as products like batteries, tyres, office supplies and piping. These products can be securely placed on commercial shelving in a safe space all of their own.
The big advantage you have with commercial shelving comes in the versatility in storing so many different items of shape and size, giving them a space of their own so that they do not affect the general warehouse space and storage.
No matter what you store on commercial shelving, they need to be manually moved following HSE guidelines.
Along with what we have already covered, commercial shelving offers a wave of advantages for your premises. One is that you can have custom designs to provide the very best storage solution to your specific needs and that the system created will be easy and fast to assemble on-site.
Commercial shelving is highly versatile and allows for immediate access to every unit load and is a great way to improve and utilise all of the available space you have on your premises.
For more information on all warehouse storage equipment and industrial storage racks, contact the team at Monarch Shelving today and discover the benefits.
Do you have plans to expand your business? If the answer is yes, you may discover that expand your shelving is the better alternative if you want to keep additional paperwork or stock over moving your entire operation to a larger warehouse space.
Storing and stacking your files and stock is a precarious task in ensuring that they don’t get damaged and you retain ease in accessibility. If you have a pallet racking system that has a large mixture of stock that is starting to get disorganised through cramped available space, commercial shelving may be the ultimate addition to your existing warehouse for smaller items.
Installing a solution such as commercial shelving alongside your pallet racking requirements allows for a greater emphasis on stock control. You can move smaller, compact stock items to an area fitted with commercial shelving that will ensure no weighty damage is done to smaller stock items.
The majority of warehouses that report lost and damaged stock in smaller items come from them being fitted between larger items on pallet racking, feeling they have no option as they have nowhere else to put them. By allocating a smaller section or room within your warehouse space specifically for commercial shelving, you can reduce your losses and improve warehouse operations.
The space will require adequate room for manoeuvrability between the shelving, but not to a threatening degree. This means that you can improve your stock levels for larger items in your industrial storage racks without risking damage to other stock.
Organising how you stock items on both your pallet racing and commercial shelving can always be improved. Many warehouses fail to adopt the principle of having heavier and bulkier items stored at the bottom levels and lighter stock at the top.
This reduces the risk of accidents from falling stock and overloading of weight requirements on your systems, giving you a more secure system and longevity overall. By designating stock to labelled boxes, you also reduce the risk of losing stock or missing them from client orders as they can easily be found in the pick.
You must re-evaluate your warehouse layout over time to ensure that you are still receiving the very best in operational control of your space.
This includes constantly evaluating your inventory and how you are stocking it, being realistic with what you are storing and if you are ordering too much stock in a season where it is on the downswing.
Contact the team at Monarch Shelving today to explore your warehouse storage equipment possibilities and expand your shelving.
With your business growth inevitable, you look for better solutions to keep your operations on a progressive path. Self-storage is a good alternative to keeping your additional paperwork and stock in check, rather than relocating to bigger premises.
There is a definite skill to effectively stacking and storing files and stock so that they do not get damaged and to make accessibility much easier for your staff. Let’s look at some tips on organizing a self-storage unit for your warehouse.
Having pallet racking or commercial shelving installed within your warehouse is the best way to keep things organised. This does take some additional planning in the layout and allocation of space between them so that staff have adequate walkways to do their job and not hold up other workers.
The best way to utilise these options is to stock items that see regular use and replenishment at the front of your shelving so that it makes for quicker pick time.
It is a good idea to have sturdy storage boxes for smaller products that can be stacked neatly and not left in odd spots across your shelving.
Use a marker pen to clearly label these boxes so that it saves you time looking into many to find certain objects. Rather than stacking paperwork inside these boxes, try using boxes that come fitted with hanging files instead, enabling you to quickly find papers without waiting time rummaging through randomly stacked papers. These allow you to free up space by getting rid of bulky filing cabinets and simply organising them in boxes on their own dedicated shelf space.
An important part of storage with your commercial shelving or office equipment Manchester is the compilation of your inventory.
Your inventory allows for an at-glance detail of what type of product you have stored, as well as easier management of stock control moving forward. Shelving is also a great accommodator for those smaller stock items that are mixed between bigger items in your pallet and picking bays, allowing for these items to have their own specific space and not get lost in between bigger items.
Having a sectioned-off area just for smaller stock picks increases your efficiency and picking times, and greatly reduces your damaged stock levels by keeping them safely out of hectic picking lanes.
For more information on industrial storage racks and warehouse storage equipment, talk with the team at Monarch Shelving today.
Whatever your available space is, there are many solutions available when it comes to determining your storage fulfilment. Some solutions work best for you, but you will need to consider various factors to get the very best from them.
Your first consideration is understanding the difference between shelving and racking. Commercial shelving is generally for lighter items that can be stacked and stored individually or in boxes. Pallet racking is more utilised for heavy-duty storage as they take the weight and size of palletized goods into consideration.
Commercial shelving typically is accessed by hand, with warehouse staff putting goods for storage onto the shelving themselves from floor level or by steps. Being hand loaded, they don’t assemble up to the ceiling of the warehouse or out of general reach.
pallet racking systems are loaded via the use of forklifts due to the typical heavy nature of goods housed on them. This results in the system being more sturdy by design and constructed by the use of heavy-duty steel. The height of these systems is limited by the safe reach of the forklift, but able to hold much more stock as a result.
When choosing the right solution for your warehouse storage equipment, there are things you need to consider.
The first is the maximum height that you want to stack. This not only affects your choice but also what you load upon it. The height determines the reach of who or what is stacked on the shelving or racking, as if it is done by hand you are limited by the amount of overhead height or steps. If you use a forklift, then the ceiling is the limit.
The average height for pallet racking is around 8m, but that does not mean it is a limit to how high you can stack. That determination comes down to your ceiling height after all, and it would be unusual for a warehouse to not utilise that upward space as much as possible.
If you are stacking a wide range of items, the smaller and lighter ones would require the top space whilst heavier items occupy the bottom levels. This not only aids in the stacking of goods, but it also keeps the centre of gravity well positioned for your chosen system.
To be able to access how the goods are going to be used and the best shelving solution for your warehouse storage equipment – as well as the ability to design the perfect system – contact the team at Monarch Shelving today.
How does a warehouse benefit turn into warehouse safety hazards? In the form of pallet racking, it can be costly to both your business image and your employee wellbeing when your racking suffers an accident that compromises the integrity of the system.
If not maintained and inspected regularly, your warehouse storage equipment can quickly become a common warehouse hazard. Here are some causes to look out for.
Every warehouse has an instance where inadequately trained employees have used or maintained warehouse pallet racking and it turned out for the worse. These are more likely to cause accidents than any other.
All employees who work around a system of this kind need to understand how to operate around it, understand the dangers of working under them and, more importantly, how to report any incident which can compromise the entire system.
All employees need to be fully trained in safety precautions around the pallet racking to reduce the risks of both harm and damage.
If your pallet racking is not regularly inspected, serious or light damage that can lead to a full racking collapse is being ignored – that poses the biggest possible risk to workers and company operations overall.
Signs of wear and tear and where repairs would require immediate action being taken going unnoticed leaves a bad impression on your company’s health and safety measures. If your racking is not safe, your business is not safe.
Be sure to have the racking inspected monthly and repair where needs repairing to avoid catastrophe.
Everyone should know how important it is to have a safe and reliable storage solution in place, but the weight they hold has a nasty habit of becoming overloaded by not double-checking the inventory and overstocking.
This can mean shifting certain products to an area with commercial shelving – or simply downsizing your stock intake on certain items not shifting as fast as others. Having control over your stock amounts and ensuring you do not have an excessive amount of stock provide struggle for your system, you make the difference between a full collapse and a longer lifespan for your system.
Moving parts on pallet racking systems can wear out and make the likelihood of a collapse more apparent.
Rust can occur when exposed to elements or chemicals regularly, and these are instances that need to be reported as soon as noticed. Sometimes they can be rusted beyond repair, and the entire system will require replacing.
In those instances of warehouse safety hazards, contact the team at Monarch Shelving so that a full appraisal of your current and future needs can be fully planned.
Ensuring that your warehouse is fully optimised, safe, and compliant through racking protection solutions is the secret to flourishing within a safe working environment. The daily operations of a high-functioning facility still present numerous risks to your operations and workforce.
One of the biggest known hazards is posed by collisions caused by poor and improper use of handling equipment like loaders, forklifts and picking trucks. Damaged or weakened components and quarantined aisles seriously affect your day-to-day operations and lose your company money by associated downtime.
In more extreme cases, cumulative damage and heavy impact can result in full pallet racking collapse. Mitigating these risks with racking protection is the most logical and responsible solution for your business.
Despite the multiple benefits to your business, it often gets overlooked – despite HSE guidelines recommending that racking protection be installed. A lack of legislation allows many businesses to sacrifice the costs in favour of additional space – or view it as an unnecessary cost altogether.
Considering the price of steel and components nowadays, it would make much more sense to protect it as much as possible. Racking maintenance can quickly become an all-consuming cost to a business if components are left exposed, and in later stages can become unsalvagable and will require replacement with an entirely new and costly system.
The most effective way of protecting your pallet racking system can come in a few different forms, although it is advised that you consult with your installer on which one is best for your specific setup.
Column guards are the most common protection against forklifts and pallet truck collisions and the best product to start with. End-of-aisle barriers provide essential protection for pallet racking also, as the ends of aisles are more exposed to potential collisions from turning too fast or misjudgment of allocated space.
If the ends are unprotected, some of the most vital components to your industrial storage racks are open to significant impact.
Also of importance to combat, the amount of damage is to have clear signage and markings to indicate how distanced equipment should be from the racking system. These markings and signs should be a part of your health and safety training for new and existing employees to know the safe boundaries and risks stemming from collision or overloading.
Consulting with a racking installer on how to best protect your investment into warehouse storage equipment, as well as finely assembling a process of reporting and inspecting your pallet racking regularly, helps to keep your system safe and secure and able to store stock for a long lifespan.
Contact the team at Monarch Shelving today for all commercial shelving, racking protection solutions, and pallet racking enquiries.
Does your warehouse storage equipment sag when your workforce stacks products on top of them? This would usually be a sign that they are unstable and close to collapse – which is the worst-case scenario for your warehouse business.
Not only would this result in a total loss on your commercial shelving, but this also results in stock loss and potential injury to your staff working around them. Either way, it costs your company an astronomical amount of money and loss.
You need to ensure that all of your warehouse storage equipment and fixtures are properly installed and only utilised for the products they are designed to stock – nothing heavier than the weight guidelines they have.
To properly distribute weight on your shelving solutions, there are some guidelines to follow to the letter.
No matter if it is shelving or industrial storage racks, consider the amount of weight you will be required to store upon them and hope many your products weigh.
Alongside that, take into consideration how tall and wide these products will be and how many are to be stacked within the spaces allocated for them. Looking ahead at the possibility of these products changing in volume or being more in demand in certain parts of the year gives you a clearer input to storage component requirements and makes an easier choice of system to meet the weight needs.
Evenly distributing weight across your shelving or storage solutions is an essential part of avoiding structural collapse.
It is deemed best practice to place heavier items on the sides of your shelves and lighter items more centrally. When possible, place the heaviest stock over the brackets of your system. No single part of a shelf should hold more weight than other parts of your shelf.
Every shelving and pallet racking manufacturer will provide strict instructions regarding weight capacity.
These guides are extremely helpful when purchasing and loading storage components, but it is always better to be safe than sorry. Storing weight that exceeds the manufacturer’s guidelines, it is best to reinforce the current system or upgrade to a system that allows for more support for products at a higher and riskier level. Do not take chances with your storage system guidelines for weight storage, as this is sure to end badly in most instances.
Contact the team at Monarch Shelving today for all pallet racking and commercial shelving requirements.
It is important to have full confidence in your warehouse storage equipment, especially if you run a hectic paced business. You trust in your system to stand the test of time and secure all of your products in easy to access locations throughout each business day, allowing you to move swiftly and securely around them without risk of trips or the shelving falling apart. There are signs that your commercial shelving may be compromised and in need of replacement shelves.
As your business starts to expand, there is a great air of excitement that your products are gaining so much demand and you are ordering and providing even more to meet it. Your first sign would be that you are getting short on storage to meet the demand, and the stock starts to occupy away from your shelving or pallet racking.
First and foremost, you need a safe working environment – not susceptible to trips and cramped working conditions. If your shelving has no room to fit the product then it is time to find more efficient options for storage.
The words optimum efficiency have to play into your shelving plans, ready to meet growth and stock a wide variety of products as the years and fads come along. Wider and taller shelving is always an option to stock your overfill.
With everyday use, your shelving will no doubt start to become weaker from elements and products stored upon them. Heavy products placed on and off these shelves over years can begin to showcase those wear and tear signs.
It only takes one load too many for that shelving to finally give in and collapse, and this can be a big problem when an employee is injured as a result. Not only that, it is even worse for the stock that gets damaged at the same time.
Keep an eye on dents and bends in your shelving as well as rusty joints and shaky shelves. They are huge warning signs that your system needs urgent replacement. See it as a warning not of what can happen, but what is destined to happen. If they cannot be fixed then it is time to replace them completely.
There are plenty of warning signs in regards to your systems being no longer for the task at hand, and replacing them with a better and more secure system to meet your warehouse or store needs is a much cheaper option than the loss of stock you can experience.
Contact the team at Monarch Shelving today for all your needs on industrial storage racks, commercial shelving solutions and replacement shelves.
You can have the most organised and operation warehouse in the entire nation and, no matter how well-spaced or planned out, you will always have that little area left over that does not fit into the current set-up, and therefore requires shelving solutions for small spaces.
Awkward corners, small aisles with gaps and ceilings that differ in height and prove problematic for consistent pallet racking – They are all areas that cause a bit of frustration when they should be a solution.
These small areas of your warehouse that seem problematic may be one of the best solutions if you are creative with the space. This is an area where a mixture of commercial shelving and industrial storage racks are suitable to fill those areas.
People like to say bigger is better, but sometimes it creates a bigger problem when it comes to space – leaving some areas with gaping holes much bigger than you would have preferred.
The good news is that these smaller spaces have the great potential for smaller warehouse storage solutions such as shelving, perfect for smaller stock that currently resides alongside the larger pallet items. These cramped areas can play host to narrow wire shelving or smaller commercial shelving units to make better use of stock and space.
When new stock arrives it is usually on an entire pallet, but those items can be transferred off of a pallet onto shelving so it does not get lost in the shuffle.
Half pallet quantities can be easily transferred to smaller shelving instead of transferring them way up high on the bays out of the way. This means you can keep on top of your amounts in the warehouse and cut down on forklift time disrupting your picking lanes. You can also cut down on stocking excess stock on the end of aisles by using higher up space usually allocated to smaller pallet items that are now stocked on shelving.
It does not necessarily have to be the aisles that hold all of the stock – many warehouses have unused side rooms or breakout areas where commercial shelving can create a functional area for stock.
Having smaller shelving units means that small items have their designated area away from the bigger bulkier items that are demanding bay space. This means you are profiting from your dead space in the warehouse and able to plan for larger stock months such as Christmas and high sales periods.
Smaller spaces play a bigger part in your company growth than you think. Contact the team at Monarch Shelving for all of your shelving solutions for small spaces
Welcome to the warehouse’s busiest period for productivity, where your warehouse is soon to be overrun with orders, stock and delivery.
With many stores now switching to eCommerce solutions, warehouses now have very little time to adapt to the growing trend and required space for many clients. This can soon turn into the biggest yuletide headache you and your staff will face.
This calls for quick thinking on your existing storage solutions, and what you can do to make adequate space for what is sure to be a busy festive period.
If your pallet racking had November stock that is not a big seller, then it is time to shift that a bit higher up the racking and out of the way of the products that are soon to be shifting like hotcakes.
Putting lesser selling items up towards your ceiling where they can be picked whenever needed makes a lot of sense when hot items are required to be mass stored in the aisles. It also makes good use of your pallet racking systems by having these items put high up out of the way to allow for a more productive workflow.
Even though staff will go through countless training exercises in safety, the Christmas period is going to be the most challenging towards it – with many employees rushing to get stock out and orders fully picked.
This can sometimes lead to staff waiting for forklifts to unload new pallets and holding up traffic, and some workers wanting to cut a corner just to get a product quickly so their pick is over and done. By taking an afternoon to remind them of all of their training and how much busier it is expected to get, you will reduce the number of accidents that can happen during the season.
If you have much smaller stock, remove them from the bigger items and provide some commercial shelving for them in a separate part of the building where they can be picked without being misplaced or holding up the line.
There are many different forms of warehouse storage equipment that can fit in smaller storage rooms or breakout areas, making good use of space and stock in one fell swoop.
For more information on making the festive season a well-stacked one, contact the team at Monarch Shelving today. Stay on top pf your orders, stock and delivery!
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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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