Five ways to improve your racking systems
Good racking makes it easy to quickly find and access what you need, whether you’re combing through a warehouse full of products or an office worth of documents. Bad storage, on the other hand, can slow down a whole business. These five tips will elevate your racking solution to an art form.
Audit your existing solution
Maybe your existing racking or shelving solution is working well for you, but there’s almost certainly room for improvement. With the purpose of your storage solution in mind, look at what you have and what’s on the market and decide whether you’re using the right shelving. If you have high volume and quick turnover, heavy duty shelving might be ideal for you. Heavy duty racking makes it easier to load and unload items, so is great for larger or heavier products.
If your audit reveals you need to replace your shelving Ireland has great suppliers for racking and shelving, such as https://www.rackzone.ie/.
Ask your employees
Your staff probably have a very clear idea of the problems with your current shelving. If it takes too long to find things, or parts of the system are hard to access, they’ll be happy to tell you. Just listen and act on their feedback.
Work on your layout
The flow of your building can make accessing storage easier or harder. Keep goods that move quickly near your shipping and receiving area, arrange your shelves in rows so it’s easy to move between them, and keep shelves away from walls and each other so they’re more accessible to employees on foot or in forklifts.
Label your shelves
Having products in a logical layout is a big step, but clear labelling makes it much faster for staff to fill and pick from shelves. Scannable barcodes make ideal labels if you have the technology to read them. If not, clear and consistently placed (for example, always in the middle of the shelf) help employees to find what they need. Simplicity is key: don’t load down labels with irrelevant information that makes them hard to read.
Work your vertical space
If you have room, installing a mezzanine level doubles your storage space and also reduces the risk of overloading your shelves.
Most of these tips just take a little thought to apply, and can dramatically improve your storage situation.
