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Efficient Warehouse Design with Steel Shelving
Steel shelves are renowned for their durability and capacity to hold bulky or delicate items. They offer extra storage space and security for the stored items. Steel shelving is an ideal fit for use in any warehouse, from small and medium-sized enterprises to clients with enormous storage demands. The neat arrangement of items and employees’ belongings within your warehouse is vital in ensuring efficient space usage. The extra space increases your warehouse’s carrying capacity, allowing numerous products to be stored in a smaller area.
Additionally, your warehouse needs to be designed in a manner that equipment and products are easily retrievable. This will reduce damage occurring by mishandling other stored products. Also, products with a short half-life are offloaded first from the warehouse.
Why Choose Steel Shelving?
Steel shelves stand out from other storage materials due to their:
- Durability. The storage material chosen in a warehouse needs to be resistant to wear and tear. The durability accrued needs to include the equipment or products stored on the shelves. Industrial-strength steel used in warehouses can withstand occasional forklift collision and heavy loads.
- Capacity to protect delicate items. The tensile strength and durability of steel shelving are indispensable in protecting fragile items. Delicate items, for instance, electronics, can be easily protected from breakage, ensuring you maintain your inventory.
- Product visibility. The ideal height of steel shelves allows your employees to quickly find the stored products and improve the efficiency of warehouse operations. Product visibility can be enhanced by arranging products in an order that best works for your warehouse, for instance, item size, item type, or in accordance to the ABC classification.
- Resistance from the elements. Steel shelves are known to withstand high temperatures variations. Therefore, they are a perfect fit for warehouses that also manufacture goods on the same premises. These warehouses are susceptible to high temperatures. Additionally, the resistance of steel shelves to corrosion is remarkable. It is a no-brainer that steel shelves are the choice storage materials used near a loading dock where there may be exposure of elements.
- Affordable prices. Steel shelving is cost-effective, and being able to last for a long time ensures that your pockets do not run dry. Therefore, these shelves have a lower initial acquisition cost as compared to other storage materials. Additionally, the long durability afforded by steel shelves significantly reduces replacement and repair costs keeping your profits to the roof and your running costs to the ground. Steel shelves priced at very reasonable prices can be obtained from Greystone.
- Easily customizable. Steel shelving units can be customized to fit your business organization’s needs. Their ability to allow a wide range of accessories such as hinged or sliding doors confer security, while drawers and bins can hold numerous small items. Steel shelves are available in many colors that suit your aesthetic appeal and comply with the warehouse’s OSHA safety standards.
Types of Industrial Steel Shelving
There are three types of steel shelves commonly used in warehouse layout.
- Bulk steel shelving. They are also called steel heavy duty shelving. These are perfect for storing items that are too large to be held in standard steel shelving units. They feature heavy capacity shelving and the potential to keep things on the ground underneath the unit.
- Open steel shelving. Open steel shelving units are suited to the design of a highly accessible warehouse. This is crucial when the warehouse experiences significant traffic in the loading and offloading of goods. They can be reinforced by braces increasing their stability.
- Closed steel shelving. The closed steel shelving units have closed side and back panels. Therefore, they offer increased rigidity and support, not to mention extra security for the stored products. The closed steel shelves are ideal for storing employees’ belongings, such as barcode scanners, RFID checkers, and safety gear. Additionally, these shelves protect the stored items from specks of dust and debris and hence find application in retailing use.
Factors to consider when designing an efficient warehouse
For a warehouse to operate smoothly, several factors need to be taken into place. These include:
- The aisle width. This is the distance between two shelving units. The width of the aisle is critical in optimizing the storage space and increasing a warehouse’s carrying capacity. However, narrow aisles pose a challenge in performing warehouse operations. Choosing an optimal aisle width is significant when forklifts are the mainstay for loading and offloading.
- The ABC system. In a warehouse, products are stored based on ABC classification: A) Products that occupy less space and low cost to store and sell fast; B) Products that sell well and cost more than A items; C) Everything else that does not fall under categories A and B and rake in fewer profits.
- Products to be stored. The nature of the products stored in the warehouse is vital in designing and choice of storage materials. Storage of delicate or valuable items will need closed steel shelving units, while bulky items are best stored by steel heavy duty shelving.
The World-class Steel Suppliers
Greystone is a leading dealer of storage materials. Our catalog contains wire shelving materials, pallet racks, metal shelving shelving, Industrial storage, lockers, and storage bins suited for home, office, and industrial warehouses. We sell top-notch industrial-grade shelving manufactured by Hallowell, Parent Metal, and Tri-Boro Shelving. Additionally, our employees are acquainted with the art of installing steel shelving units to meet your warehouse needs. Check out our steel shelving online catalog here.