Category Archives: shelving

Can Industrial Shelving Help to Maximise Space?

Keeping your warehouse inventory organised is extremely tough if your warehouse is of a smaller size and your stock levels are rising. If left unrecognised and unattended, the warehouse soon creates an untidy, disorganised and hazardous arena to work within.

The solution is having industrial storage racks and commercial shelving to help keep the organization and flow of business in check.

Where it All Leads

By ignoring the most prevalent problems in your current working space, you soon start to see a plethora of problems underneath them affecting your business operations. The biggest problem you will face is negative client perception.

How your company looks to a potential customer or supplier visiting your site is of prime importance and a lack of organisation leaves a sour taste in the mouth of anyone wanting to do business. It is not a confidence builder and reflects negatively on your management.

This starts a chain reaction where your staff will have decreased efficiency and productivity and pulls the morale of your staff down even further. To combat this, maximising your space with the right warehouse storage equipment can eliminate the dangers of an untidy workplace.

Right Steps

By firstly accessing your current storage solutions, you can take stock and make notes of what is stored where and how. Getting feedback from your management team and staff on the main core problems from their level also helps to get a better understanding of where things are currently problematic and helps with a better strategy to counter all.

Talk on areas about your warehouse space with regards to the flow of operations, accessibility for stock and picking, space for stock and how the current dimensions are suitable or not for the handling of stock.

Your workers have the best experience on how difficulties in the operations are, and their voice can be good fuel for inspiration of making things flow better.

Vertical Plan

Vertical space is all about the best utilization of warehousing, with a quicker and easier optimization by extending upwards instead of outwards.

Extending pallet racking bays upwards to help store stock that is taking up valuable floor level, yet not shifting as fast as other stock – making it perfect for having more floor room for faster shifting stock. Also, smaller items could benefit from smaller commercial shelving in a segregated area of the warehouse making better use of other areas of the warehouse.

For all warehouse storage equipment solutions and better space alternatives for your warehouse, contact the team at Monarch Shelving today.

Best Planning for Warehouse Shelving

When you look to move to new business premises and incorporate new warehouse facilities, the planning of your storage and warehouse shelves design should ideally be a straightforward process – it is, after all, a blank canvas to start on.

However, when designing your storage facilities, they should be designed from the inside out and beginning with the goods that need to be stored. The racking and shelving should be designed to decrease the item distance of travel, as well as how far the staff will be required to walk to collect them.

When commercial shelving and pallet racking is properly planned, you can make significant improvements in functionality. You also get to speed up your loading and unloading and increase output by having space more efficiently utilised. Accommodating high volume storage is key to significant savings on the company by being able to order in bulk and store adequately.

Redesigning Storage

Your warehouse storage usage will change as your business does, finding that new lines will be incorporated, requirements for storage will change and your shelving and racking arrangements will become of little to no use as time moves on.

Typically, a company would do a stock movement assessment to reduce any unnecessary manual handling of goods. This will reduce the distance that goods have to travel from the loading bay to their designated storage area as far as possible, further reducing the need for manual handling. In doing this, large bulkier items will be contained closer to loading bays whilst the more infrequent accessed stock would be placed furthest away.

Calculate Space

Before your commercial shelving and pallet racking arrangements can be planned and ordered, you need to know the exact dimensions of the available space. Any miscalculation or misplanning can have costly implications if the system does not fit the space it needs to.

Take the floor area measurements as well as the height of the room into consideration, factoring in any overhead pipes or ductwork. The calculation of the clear space must be done right when planning your storage facilities, rather than the dimensions of the building.

Access the Requirement

Even the smallest storage facility with limited floor space is open to plenty of storage potential. The important thing to consider is the dead air space the room holds and how it can be used to storage advantage.

The choice of your warehouse shelves design will be dictated ultimately by how much you look to store and the space you have to store it in. Arranging your shelving with narrow aisles ensures the most efficient use of space, but if you need plenty of loading and unloading room, you may need to think much higher in storage.

Talking with the team at Monarch Shelving helps to find the exact type of system for your storage needs. Contact the team today for all warehouse storage equipment needs.

Why You Would Need Commercial Shelving

When it comes to storing your goods in a warehouse environment, a commercial warehouse shelving systems is one of the best solutions available. Most business owners are non-pulsed in the difference between shelving and racking and know the benefits of each, but the use of shelving can make a huge difference for a storage facility and the staff productivity on a day to day basis.

What is Commercial Shelving?

For a warehouse, many items fly through to varying sizes. Whilst most can take up an entire space within pallet racking bays, smaller more compact items are suited to something smaller and easier to pick from.

Commercial shelving is used for smaller hand-picked items from boxes, drums and larger cartons that are wasted on larger bays. This shelving can be made from steel or other materials in a variety of heights, widths and lengths and don’t have to be stationed on the warehouse floor. The ability to move these into more compact rooms creates a great separation from main warehouse operations and allows for a more productive workflow where smaller items are not being picked in larger aisles and holding up the workflow for forklifts and such.

Storage on Commercial Shelving

With these smaller items, it is much more ideal to store them on their own shelving away from the hustle and bustle of your business. If you have certain products that are an odd shape, are more fragile stock or are bulkier than other stock it is around – commercial shelving is the perfect solution for storage needs.

Products such as batteries, tyres, office supplies and long pipes are among the many stock products that are ideal scenarios for commercial shelving. The ability to have them safely secured and stored in an area more suited to their needs provides your workforce with time spared searching for ambler items in aisles and able to pick them easily.

Versatility

The biggest advantage of commercial shelving is its versatility, allowing you to store multiple items of differing shapes and sizes into one area, although sure not to overload them or store everything in the centre of the shelving without distributing the weight accordingly.

Depending on your specific requirements, more bespoke commercial shelving can be provided and give immediate access to all unit loads. Commercial shelving is a great way of utilising all available storage space and is fast and easy to assemble to get to work.

Specialists

Depending on your requirements, it is always advised to discuss with your supplier exactly how the shelving will be intended for use. This will best determine the kind of shelving system and whether any special reinforcement is required to better protect your shelving.

Contact the team at Monarch Shelving today for commercial warehouse shelving systems.

Which Industrial Shelving Suits Your Needs?

Ensuring that flexibility is in place is among the chief concerns for distribution centres and warehouse floors as things can change in quick succession over the years. Being able to adapt alongside these changes to growing demand and changes makes the installation of commercial shelving an integral part of the structural setup. Some things need to be considered before fitting out your warehouse or factory with industrial storage shelves or pallet racking systems.

Shelving Size

The first stage to consider is what you are planning to store on your shelving system. By evaluating the products that you are looking to store, the dimensions involved and the maximum amount you are looking to store at any one time.

With all storage systems, the items will require positioning securely and safely to prevent the risk of falling from the shelving and causing damage or fatalities within the workplace. If the product range is varied, there are solutions available where bigger items can be loaded into industrial storage racks and smaller items being stored on commercial shelving units.

Examine Weight

Weight is an easy thing to underestimate when it comes to your stock, as smaller items individually may not hold much weight but can create a heavier mass in a larger quantity.

The best approach is a shelf-by-shelf basis, where you can calculate the weight in total that will be produced and compare it to the total weight available to the shelving system. When considering this, opt towards buying a system that can hold a bit of extra weight than what you plan to put onto it, ensuring no safety issues will arise later on down the line.

How You Will Use the System

Accessibility is going to be the most important factor – not just how you access it but where the shelving will be positioned and manoeuvred around.

Thinking about the ease of use for your staff and picking equipment in navigating around your system and how busy the area is expected to get during busy portions of the day are very important to the best utility and choice of the system in question. If you plan on your shelving being high then you need to plan around the area in question to determine how your staff will be able to reach the products without causing harm, damage or disruption to day to day work.

Although it all may seem straightforward, sometimes the most basic guidelines can be overlooked and be costly in time and money to rectify. Contact the team at Monarch Shelving today for all your warehouse storage equipment and industrial storage shelves.

Shelving Mishaps You Need to Avoid

Mistakes happen in every kind of business – the real harm comes from ignoring the potential of them happening. In the environment of a warehouse or distribution centre, they can be costly, embarrassing and fatal. How best to avoid making mistakes with commercial warehouse shelving is to ensure that they are paid attention to and rectified. In warehouses, there are common mistakes that almost always happen at least once .

Keeping Consistent

The worse thing that you may be doing with your commercial shelving is that it is all over the place and not consistent. If you have much different Frankenstein-style shelving pieced together to make up your aisles then you are doing yourself an injustice.

For starters, it doesn’t look good and does more harm to your brand than good. If the look of all shelving, pallet racking and warehouse storage equipment looks all over the place, just imagine how much a nightmare it is in stocking them up.

Ensuring that your racking systems are consistent with your brand is one of the major mishaps you need to avoid.

Dirty Shelving

In keeping it consistent, you also need to keep the shelving clean. Stock is stored in your warehouse and the majority of owners of that stock would not be happy to discover that they sit on dusty, grimy and dirt littered shelving.

Be sure to keep your shelving cleaned whenever the stock is emptied and before any new stock arrived. It is not a time-consuming process and can be covered in your commercial cleaning contract, which is much better than word starting to spread that you have unclean premises not fit to hold precious stock.

Proper Installation

The other main threat when it comes to shelving is discovering that it is not installed correctly or to standard. If you notice shaking in the shelving, a bad dent that provides a rattling or instability in its construction, it needs addressing straight away.

If it is ignored for long enough, then the day arrives when a partial or full collapse of your shelving system leads to damaged stock, hold up in time whilst things are cleared or, even worse, a staff member seriously injured. These are some of the worst-case scenarios, with others being irreparable damage done to your businesses reputation and a loss of confidence from your workforce for not providing a safe working atmosphere.

Some solutions are simple and others call more drastic measures, but each mistake can be costly for your business image. For industrial storage racks, commercial warehouse shelving and office equipment Manchester, contact the team at Monarch Shelving today.

Which Shelving is for You?

All workplaces are different and require different approaches to being provided with commercial shelving units, racking and storage requirements. If you have warehouses, offices, storerooms and other areas within the perimeter then you may require differing warehouse storage equipment throughout.

How do you know which area requires different storage solutions?

Understanding Difference

Whilst you may think one solution is just as good as another as long as they are simply stacked away, it is not the case at all. If you choose the wrong storage type then you stand to be in a lot of trouble, and not just to the money in your budget you have just wasted.

It takes some forward thought and some guidance from a professional to be able to correctly ascertain what storage is needed for what area. You need to take into account such things as height, weight capacity and storage that will be placed onto it.

Office

In an office environment, the shelving requirements generally fall into light-duty shelving. Being lightweight and easy to put together, it suits the general look and feel of an office environment is being able to store everything from folders to important binders and even awards.

To make sure the product lasts the longest, weight should be evenly spread across the shelves to avoid any dipping from heavier objects placed.

Storage or Stock Room

Depending on the type of stock you are looking to place on your shelving in this area, there are many different types of commercial shelving you can choose from.

Whilst generally considered too small an area for larger pallet based racking, commercial shelving units can store food, boxes or files that are generally considered medium-heavy products. These shelves will have to be cautiously stacked though for fear of overloading them.

Factory or Warehouse

Manufacturing and distribution is a typically big area of operation that encompasses a large array of different stocks flying in and out all day and night.

Assuming you require storing bulky and heavier supplies or equipment around the warehouse, more heavy-duty storage such as pallet racking would be the ideal choice. Pallet racking systems can store upwards of 2,000kg per shelf and are bolted to the ground and sometimes the walls to ensure that they are stable and strong enough to take the abnormally larger stock.

When it comes to kitting out your business premises the right way, you need to talk with professionals who know which is the best for you. Contact the team at Monarch Shelving today.

Smaller Shelving Options

No matter how well planned or spacious your warehouse is, you will always have those little spaces left around the premises that can be utilised with smaller shelving options for more storage.

Whether they are awkward corners, smaller aisle space or lower ceiling areas that can affect your implementation of pallet racking or industrial storage racks, they can be quite an eyesore when you know something could better use that space but are not sure what.

These smaller spaces can be best utilised to install smaller commercial shelving systems which allow for more maximising of space and being a little creative.

Smaller Shelving

Taking account of your smaller spaces, you can always look into shelving that can fit the space or be made to fit.

These spaces would suit those smaller items that are slotted in aisles between larger bulkier items, meaning you are getting a more streamlined and decluttered warehouse setting by better utilization of space.

Restructuring Quantity

When you shift some stock to a smaller area, you will no doubt have to re-evaluate the number of certain products that are shipped to you.

For smaller items previously, you may have ordered twice the amount to fill out a pallet rack bay. With the shift in how you store it, you will need to rethink the amounts that you are provided with to prevent them from being overloaded. If you reduce your requirement to a half pallet quantity, they not only keep your stock healthy but are also much easier to find away from larger items that could dwarf them on pallet racking.

Set Up Cross-Docking Space

If you have products that shift much quicker than others, you can benefit from looking at smaller shelving options to install towards your main docking space.

It also works for space to store items that are heavier and bulkier than pallet racking aisles can handle, but setting up some shelving saves a lot of time in documenting and storing without having to take time in adding them to the main inventory.

Store Room Shelving

Old disused offices or break rooms within the facility can be utilised to a great capacity with the use of warehouse storage equipment and commercial shelving.

Many much smaller items can be stored here, or even a lot of back-office stationary or filing can be put in archives within there to maximise space in other areas that may be cluttered. Using shelving systems helps to keep them all organised whilst making the best use of disused space.

For more information on warehouse storage equipment, contact the team at Monarch Shelving.

Saving Space in the Workplace

As a business owner with a sizable warehouse operation, there are countless ways you can find yourself playing catch up on organising your business to get the most out of the space you can fill up by using different types of warehouse storage systems.

Whilst making the most of the space by getting as much out of it as possible is one way to go, there is also a consideration in reducing the amount of clutter you can build up at the same time.

Reduce the Scattering

In all offices, storerooms and warehouses you are bound to experience smaller products scattered across your shelving units.

Not only does this cause problems in trying to locate the product but also it is taking up valuable space that belongs to something else. One way to combat these scattered items is to box them, containing them in organised boxes as a way to retain the organisation you require to effectively process stock. Even the smallest item loose in a spot can make it feel congested.

Box up those little things into an organised containment option.

Stack Upwards

Your warehouse may have fully stacked aisles from wall to wall and still be struggling to house stock.

Items tend to double in size as the busier seasons roll upon us, but you can combat it by having your pallet racking move upwards. Expanding your pallet racking upwards provides an opportunity to take advantage of unused ceiling space so that you can add stock and stability to your operation without having to stack at the end of aisles.

Layout Organisation

As your company expands and grows in stature your floor space will undoubtedly start to decrease.

In order to be more efficient with your space, you may need to shift around your commercial shelving systems, possibly moving them from a central space to a walled occupancy. Shifting more bulkier products and supplies from one side of the room to its own area exclusively may also provide adequate spacing, reducing your cramped and inefficient working space.

Upgrade Solutions

As time has moved on so has the designs and streamlining potential of industrial storage racks.

There could be great potential in upgrading your current pallet racking to something that does not take up as much space in aisles and is reinforced to take on much more stock than you currently have.

For further options in warehouse storage equipment and office equipment Manchester to save space in your warehouse operations, contact the team at Monarch Shelving today for different types of warehouse storage systems.

Protecting Your Pallet Racking

Within your warehouse, your pallet racking can sustain immense damage on any given day due to many unexpected calamities such as forklift trucks to access equipment.

There are many instances where damage can occur as a normal procedure, but it only takes one instance where all that built-up damage can lead to a catastrophe if not adequately repaired or fully replaced.

When it comes to replacing pallet racking, Monarch Shelving has you covered. But how do you reinforce extra measures to make it last much longer and be protected against potential fatality in the workplace?

Protective Measures

By installing steel floor mounted column guards you are reinforcing the strength of the posts and columns of your pallet racking.

By having this option bolted to the floor in front of each post, your pallet racking is further protected from any knocks that could devastate your inventory. Rack end protection barriers can also help to keep vulnerable areas safe from serious damage in the case of accidents or collision. Although dents will occur whenever an incident does come into contact, you will find this is mostly the extent of any damage caused.

Brightly coloured safety bollards are always a great precaution when strategically placed around the warehouse. Found placed around walls, offices and loading bays they help to greatly reduce impact from glancing blows to collisions head-on.

Other Measures

Collisions with pallet racking can be caused by a number of other factors also, such as low lighting in aisles and especially clogged up areas and overstuffed racking.

If you suffer from aisles that overflow and some products that are larger but not as popular on picking, you can look at extending your pallet racking higher and placing these larger items up high out of the way of picking trucks and forklifts, which also keeps your productivity sharp.

If your current racking is too bulky and you could utilize a slimmer and fresher model that keeps areas spacious and provides stronger support for your products, then you can look to overhaul existing with new racking. This does not have to be done overnight as you can section the replacement and be able to move the product to accommodate the change.

In order to safely reduce the amount of damage within your warehouse premises, you need to access the most likely or reported damages by your workforce and plan accordingly on the measures to implement and avoid catastrophe.

Contact the team at Monarch Shelving for the best in warehouse storage equipment and solutions for your business.

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