Category Archives: Storage solutions

Archive Storage: The Best Solution

When you are a business owner (or even a private individual), you will build up a lot of important documents that need protecting and preserving for the future. Whilst many try to push things to a digital spectrum when it comes to documentation, many business owners choose to keep physical copies, just in case you should lose all of your digital files in an incident.

Items like company accounts, employee information and other pressing business documents need to be kept in a safe place – but many business owners don’t have an option and tend to box them in a cupboard with no real organisation.

Use Filing Cabinets

Sure, it may sound obvious to most people running a business, but you would be surprised how many business owners overlook the simplest solutions.

Filing cabinets can be bulky objects, but they are a means to an end and the easiest way to categorise your documentation into easy-to-find locations. The construction and design of filing cabinets are made to be fully effective against water damage, sunlight and any insect or vermin infestation that may invade your business premises.

You can use the drawers of a filing cabinet to split archived files and items into categories of relevance, finding it much easier to pull out the relevant information when you need it.

Archive Storage Racking

Sometimes filing cabinets will fall short of your needs for storage of important documents. The second option would be archive storage racking units.

This product is specifically designed to store and organise those objects of importance and do it in a way that is cost-effective, strong and durable and a long-term solution for your business. It is a proven perfect model for the storage of a business’s vital documentation so that it is not compromised.

You can use archive storage racking to fill multiple rows of boxed-up documents, files, photographs, case files, employee documentation and records and other business files for decades, having them stored perfectly without any ruin.

Commercial Shelving

For individual rooms that could utilise storage space, commercial shelving is a great option that takes away the use of filing cabinets and larger racking alternatives in favour of something more structured to the area.

Using commercial shelving in designated spaces is perfect for storing multiple boxes and other items in a neat and organised fashion. Plus, it does not break the ban to fit out an area with regular or ceiling-tall shelving options.

If you want to keep your documentation organised but do not know the best warehouse storage equipment to use, contact the team at Monarch Shelving today.

Self-Storage Through Longspan 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.

Longspan Shelving

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.

Boxes

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.

Organise Inventory

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.

Warehouse Storage is Not Just Racking

When you think about warehouse storage systems, pallet racking is generally the first thing that springs to mind. After all, industrial storage racks are a speciality product that the team at Monarch Shelving talks loudly about and is proud to have a proven track record of stunning work.

Whilst it is a big part of our overall operation, there are many other ways to store your inventory that is just as effective as pallet racking and able to handle smaller items.

Commercial Shelving

For your company’s non-palletised items, there are many other solutions such as long-span commercial shelving, a heavy-duty system that works alongside pallet racking in the same way, with upright frames and horizontal beams.

Long-span beams have a z profile rather than a box section of racking beams, allowing for the chipboard deck to sit securely between them. Support bars underneath the chipboard can take well over 500kg per shelf for almost all beam sizes. The system is robust and versatile and available in many sizes, filling the layout and the available space to accentuate the storage potential.

Cantilever Racking

Cantilever racking is also an effective way for storing longer materials such as pipes, logs, rods, structural sections and flat sheets such as chipboard. There are options for both single or double-sided cantilever storage for long and lightweight items.

This system is easy to assemble, simple, stable ad safe – everything a warehouse needs. For heavier loads, we recommend higher-strength bespoke solutions which include systems for both indoor and outdoor use.

Personal Storage

If you are looking for storage solutions for your employees to keep their personal belongings safe within the workplace, there is a huge selection of office equipment Manchester storage requirements that can safely handle large amounts of storage.

These items are smaller than larger storage racking and shelving and able to occupy smaller rooms and office space, available in many different sizes and colours and are suitable for long-term use. This also helps when it comes to storing company records, documents and assorted filing needs that need to be found when required. The ability for these items to have their dedicated storage area helps to keep your business organised and running smoothly.

Whatever your warehouse storage requirements, the team at Monarch Shelving will have either an existing or bespoke solution for your business. Contact us today to discuss your space and how you would like to fill it with commercial storage solutions available to you.

Best Storage Methods for Your Warehouse

Online commerce has created many new small businesses that are in search of space to store backstock of goods. Whilst it may sound cliche, most new small companies start from modest beginnings and their best storage solutions for stock is to keep goods stored within their homes or sheds, piled up in boxes that take up entire rooms. It is an unpractical and short-term solution.

Businesses of all sizes need a place to store stock in a clean, safe and efficient setting and this is where warehouses come into play. But simply putting boxes into a building is not enough – good storage space is only as valuable as the methods in which stock is stored.

Choosing a warehouse will benefit any business with the advantage of increased storage space, allowing for dedicated warehouse storage equipment to safeguard your stock and make it easier to pick up an order. Many storage solutions, such as pallet racking and commercial shelving, improve the efficiency of the warehouse as a whole.

Commercial Shelving

Commercial shelving is the perfect choice for improving your warehouse or storage space and is a very durable choice. A critical consideration for your storage is what material this shelving is made from.

Many people choose wooden shelving as it is sturdy and long-lasting, yet it does require regular inspections for potential damage and wear despite its everyday use. In the wrong environment – such as one prone to moisture or refrigeration, wood can be a significant problem in short order.

Metal shelving is an excellent alternative to wood, being robust and durable. Stainless steel shelving can protect against rust in moisture-centric environments also. Plastic storage shelving has been popular for many years thanks to its improvement in quality materials to make them stronger, as well as protected against stains and bacteria growth.

pallet racking

For larger warehouse operations, a pallet racking system is an ultimate solution for storage that allows for large numbers of pallets containing stock to be stored to ceiling height if required.

This not only allows for great use of additional space but also allows for many warehouses to increase their business by separating space for multiple clients. Warehouses with effective forklift operation can store larger quantities of additional stock at ceiling height and reduce their operations being compromised by stock at aisle ends.

As with shelving, pallet racking needs to be routinely checked for signs of damage or wear and tear, being sure to document and act on any structural integrity issues or incidents.

Whatever your warehouse requires in storage needs, the team at Monarch Shelving are on hand to supply and install the best solution.

The Best Fit for Your Money

One of the many pressures a warehouse or distribution centre faces is overstock, leading to floorspace and racking becoming overloaded. No matter what size warehouse you run, horizontal space is always limited.

What many business owners fail to grasp as a concept is that vertical space holds the solution to most spatial restrictions. No warehouse wants its stock on the floor or occupying the end of aisle space, so it is time to redefine how your space is used. This results in specialised pallet racking to boost that storage potential.

Racking Space

Warehouse racking appeals due to the relative ease it has in storage and forklift interaction. When distribution challenges come thick and fast, the best pallet racking for warehouses is future-proofed for decades to come.

If you have just purchased or rented a new warehouse space, it makes sense to install racking that supports the most efficient distribution process from the outset. There are different variations of pallet racking designed to suit every kind of warehouse environment in distribution and storage. As an example, there is double deep pallet racking for slow rotation stock lines, as well as live pallet storage for more rapid rotation – a highly effective system for fast handling times.

When setting up your warehouse racking system, you want to have optimum options to plan for the future, adapting to supply chain challenges or customer demand.

Using Vertical Space

Business owners typically consider the horizontal space over anything else whilst not considering the vertical aspect of their storage needs. If you plan on using vertical space, you will need to ensure that your lifting equipment can accommodate it.

Your pallet racking system needs to consider enough room for forklifts and pallet trucks without wasting any potential storage space you have. Poor design wastes significant volumes of capacity in each aisle. Most pallet racking installations are configured with an aisle width of 2.5 to 4 metres. There is specialist narrow aisle pallet racking systems that reduce this to 1.6 metres.

Improvement on Efficiency

Opting for vertical storage will help to improve efficiency and productivity within the warehouse. A well-conceived racking system, designed to meet the maximum requirements of the business, will easily support seamless stock handling and order fulfilment. Maximising this space with pallet racking ensures that your business will not need to invest in new premises or additional storage requirements.

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

Warehouse Storage System Quality Check

Heavy-duty warehouse storage equipment is used in every kind of industry – from clothing to medical to logistics. Every kind of industry has different requirements for its storage systems, but the accompanying problems have also appeared throughout all.

Due to the lack of clear professional standards for warehouse racking, buyers get confused over the quality of the purchased racking and the acceptance standards. When you have a professional company design and install the racking, it is a different story as they follow every step of compliance and acceptance towards pallet racking and commercial shelving.

Looking and Feeling Right

Upon installation, the vertical deviation of the shelf piece should not be more than 10mm, the height deviation of the beam on the same layer is +10mm, and the deviation of the centre distance between the bottom of the column of the adjacent shelf piece is +2mm, and the misalignment deviation of the shelf piece in the same lane and the same row is not more than 5mm.

The surface of the warehouse shelving should be sprayed evenly, with no damage, peeling coating or oil stains. Although it can be unavoidable to bump the goods during transportation, if the original is not seriously distorted or deformed, it is normal to install accessories. Once the shelves are accepted, they need to be checked to ensure they are neat and unified, form and the accessories are complete.

Install to Plan

Installation requires adhering to the layout of the drawings, with the spacing of the beams on each floor strictly following the drawing dimensions.

The welding seams on the warehouse shelving surface should have no defects such as cracks, slag incursions, welding flashes, burn-through, arc craters or needle-shaped pores. You need to check all of these before accepting your racking or shelving system upon delivery.

Be sure that all of the parts and joints where dust and water would accumulate, as well as the corrosion conditions of parts that can be affected by alternating patterns such as dry and wet. It is key to inspect the damage and rust conditions of hidden parts of your system.

Check on Delivery

You also need to confirm with your supplier that the received shelves are delivered according to the order, with all accessories complete, colour according to the sample and arriving in the required packaging and transport materials.

When working with Monarch Shelving, you can be sure that the job of planning, delivering and installing your pallet racking and commercial shelving is conducted following all expected professional standards.

Contact our team today to discuss your requirements for warehouse storage equipment.

Palletizing and Storing Bagged Inventory

As you may already have noticed, automation is currently the rage in warehousing, manufacturing and distribution. It was steadily increasing for years before the pandemic caused it to become supercharged. Palletizing caught the automation wave due to its ability to streamline and increase productivity, but also its ability to reduce worker injury and its associated losses in downtime and costs. However, if your inventory does not fit tidy, consistently-sized boxes and instead has to be placed in shifting slippery bags, what is the most effective process in storage?

Pointers for Storage

Automating all or part of your palletizing activity can work for bagged inventory by following a few pointers.

Contents of your pallet load should be kept evenly distributed on the pallet without any empty or uneven spaces. These cause inventory shifting and point loading (a concentrated area of weight destabilizing the pallet load). If your bagged items vary in weight, load the heavier bags on the bottom level and stack them with lighter bags on top.

Be sure to place your bags in ways that prevent any overhang.  Overhang is one of the bigger safety concerns as it ultimately throws off the pallet load’s weight distribution and is a leading cause of forklift and storage rack hazards. This also triggers the emergency stop of your system which slows down your process until attention is given.

Additional Precautions

You also need to ensure that any rails, guards or stops in the palletizing apparatus are free from sharp edges that risk puncturing or ripping of the bags. Plastic wrapping of the pallet load is also essential for safety, although unstable content can make it a challenge.

A rotating wrapper that holds the pallet still whilst wrapping around the load is of consideration to prevent bags from shifting during movement.

Whilst plastic wrap is important for stability, you need to see through it enough to determine if it has shifted at any point during transport. Above all else, good pallet quality is a must across the board for warehouse safety, whether palletizing, forklift transport or sitting on the pallet racking system.

Deep Storage

You can have your pallet racking system designed for two deep storage, but you will also require a deep-reach forklift for loading and unloading. Whatever the requirement is needed for warehouse storage equipment, the team at Monarch Shelving can ensure that the design, system and equipment optimize the space and labour potential.

Contact our team today to discuss your industrial storage racks requirement.

Managing Your Business Growth Headaches

No business starts to remain at the same level as they are on day one – so it is a natural thing to evaluate and change accordingly every year to reach the next level.

For the warehouse distribution and logistics sector, growth is essential for efficiency and growing reputation with your major clients. When the yearly meeting comes up about how to boost productivity and increase the bottom line, there are three main options to consider to support your business model.

Altering the Business Model

Following the COVID lockdown, most businesses bought into the world of eCommerce as high streets closed their doors to the public. The knock-on effect for logistics companies was a revelation.

Typical pallet in/pallet out operations implemented extra flexibility with their clients that was required to fulfil direct-to-consumer transactions. Digital transactions replaced the typical high street shopping and that resulted in much more stock being required over seasonal spending.

Transitioning to pick and pack is a big step that needs to be done properly to maintain customers and grow profit margins.

New Premises

Multiple businesses decided to acquire extra space for storage and operational purposes in the last year. However, many businesses resort to this as a decision taken with haste, without properly assessing them to maximise potential.

Without the proper evaluation of how these spaces can withstand company growth for decades to come, you will soon find yourself in a similar position of needing to extend your property portfolio for warehouse space. This could be avoided altogether by looking at your storage system and its capacity.

Looking at replacing your pallet racking and commercial shelving with something more suitable and allocates better use of your warehouse space is an essential element of business growth – without spending a vast fortune for more space.

Consulting with Client’s on Their Growth

Adapting to your customer’s needs can sometimes be the last thing that you plan toward, but it certainly gives a much better outlook for your operations if you kept each other involved in each other’s plans.

Understanding a client’s plans can help you to restructure what you hold and how you hold it, allowing you to shift some stock into smaller areas knowing that they have a shelf life, whilst adequately preparing space for what large stock items are ahead – as well as any special promotions that will highly increase sales of a certain stock.

Your challenge can only be properly visualised by understanding the end goal. Breaking down your requirement in warehouse space is going to be the most critical part.

Contact the team at Monarch Shelving today for your warehouse storage equipment needs.

Offering the Right Storage Solution

Running an effective and successful warehouse is much more than having operations running smoothly and keeping costs under control. Sometimes it calls for having warehouse storage equipment that is bespoke and made to suit the varied weights and types of stock you shelve throughout the year. This is something that is not available through buying second-hand racking shelving from a warehouse shutting down and looking to clear out. With that option, you are stuck with what you have – a cost-cutting solution that you can only stock what it can hold.

Working with Pros

When you work with a provider of pallet racking and commercial shelving Manchester, you have the option of not only considering your warehouse with the design but also taking into consideration what gets stocked upon it throughout the year.

Working with a company that has many years of industry experience and an available wealth of knowledge around project management on warehouse storage solutions, you can have your warehouse fitted to the maximum amount of storage and create solutions that have specific functionality and purpose for your business.

This can be revolving around seasonal stock, or solutions to allocate even more spacing for hot stock months. Whatever the requirement, specialists at Monarch Shelving Solutions allow clients to use our knowledge to create a solution for the company’s needs and remove the small-term cost-cutting measures of used racking shelving.

Combat the Old Mentality

There is nothing worse than the old approach of it “always being done that way” when it comes to warehouse projects and no warehouse gets to break the mould by taking the same approach.

Being a forward-thinking business means that everything that goes on in your business has to be for the future. Having a system specifically designed, supplied and installed so that it takes into account future planning saves your company a fortune in the long run – never having to upgrade or build an extension or purchase an extra warehouse as your business grows.

Going the bespoke route enables you to work with our staff on all aspects, including health and safety, taking into consideration all of the latest rules and regulations to ensure that your specific design is both practical and meets relevant guidelines.

Team Building

Working hand in hand with our designers ensures that no nasty surprises are waiting for you upon installation, such as aisle blockage, sprinkler and lighting protrusion and weakening of joints, fixtures and beams.

Contact the team at Monarch Shelving today for your ultimate solution in warehouse storage guaranteed to service your business for the long term.

Large Stock for Summer

Whenever the summer rolls around, warehouses can see a major increase in stock to make sure everything people could want is in good supply. However, one thing that may get pushed to the back of the thinking model is that high temperatures in the summer can lead to a variety of serious problems within a warehouse setting.

Soaring high temperatures and humidity levels can destroy stored goods such as foods and medicines. Crammed stock levels can cause harm to employees and air conditioning levels will be in high demand – meaning so will electricity costs for running the warehouse.

It is therefore important to think ahead and ensure that you have space for enough air to circulate and not build up heat levels due to overstock in the building.

Stock Control

Existing overstocks of stored goods should look at a reduction during the summer months. Evaluating what is in demand and reducing the levels of certain foods that need to be refrigerated to stop from melting is a good start.

Many warehouses that store such inventory as chocolates and refrigerated goods will need a reduction, whereas many warehouses that store drinks will need an increase. The summer trends see a lot of dips in demand for certain things and others see a dramatic rise. Consulting with the retail end to evaluate which products require pallet racking, which ones need refrigerated areas and which can be stored within commercial shelving will save on a lot of stock being wasted.

Space Control

Heat build-up within a warehouse can severely impair the well-being of employees and lead to heat exhaustion. One of the many reasons this occurs is from the warehouse is too cramped for space, resulting in employees working in cramped aisles to find the stock.

This is a problem that needs immediate action. If you cannot afford to limit your stock intake, you need a better system of working. One option is upgrading your warehouse storage equipment to be able to take in higher levels of stock and not cram everything into aisles and the ends of them.

Employees need a breathable atmosphere where they do not suffer heat exhaustion or claustrophobia. No amount of stock is worth the well-being of your workforce.

There are many ways to plan ahead and not find yourself stuck in the summer months with lost stock and unhappy workers. Contact the team at Monarch Shelving today to explore the avenues of industrial storage racks and other storage needs.

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Monarch Shelving Ltd
Unit F,Daltry Street, Oldham, Lancashire, United KingdomOL1 4AB
Tel: 0161 627 3444 or 0161 622 0022 | Fax: 01706 880520