How to efficiently organise and expand your storage space
The productivity of any warehouse, storage area or workspace relies heavily on the organisation of equipment, floor space, and inventory.
Optimizing your warehouse space starts with determining exactly how much of your warehouse is being used and what it’s being used for. Here are a few tips to help utilise your storage area.
1. Organise your space
The first step is to take a step back and and consider efficient ways to organise your workspace. The aim is to provide a safe environment for your employees and be highly efficient.
To enhance the flow of production, an organised floor plan should be created and should be set up in the order of operations.
You can optimize your available space by separating products by size and storing them with like-sized items.
The organisation and placement of shelves and containers, along with the traffic patterns and total design of the building affects the ability to utilize any available space. To improve the overall capacity of your warehouse think about vertical storage and stacking options, this will cost effectively optimise your warehouse space.
Introducing or upgrading a labelling system for your inventory is also another easy and highly effective way to organise your space.
2. Review your storage capacity
If you believe that your operation is at or nearing full capacity, your first course of action should be to conduct a capacity analysis of your entire operation. Though you may think you are at capacity, you may actually have plenty of additional floor space for growth. By auditing your current systems, workflows and technologies, a capacity analysis will help gain more clarity on your potential extra space.
To reach the optimal range, you need to calculate the total size of your warehouse, your inventory cube size, and the storage cube size in the warehouse; then, you need to determine and evaluate your warehouse utilization space.
By calculating the capacity and conducting an audit, this will reveal ways that you can optimize your existing processes and become more efficient in the short term, therefore creating space to work on long-term capacity goals.
3. Choose a storage system
Mezzanine
Mezzanine floors are an efficient and cost-effective way to increase storage capacity to your warehouse and add extra space without the expense of buying or renting a new space, or adding an extension to your current premises.
There are multiple benefits to installing a mezzanine floor to your space such as neat separation of stock, new office space, increased shelving and racking space, and the chance of avoiding planning permission issues.
Pallet Racking
Pallet racks and industrial shelving are great options for expanding your warehouse storage space and maintaining an organized system.
Pallet racking is versatile and can be customised to suit your warehouse design and inventory needs. They can be used for light, medium, and heavy-duty storage systems and come in a variety of sizes to fit your warehouse layout.
Cantilever
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Cantilever is a cost-effective, flexible and safe solution for storing long, heavy, irregular shaped or sheet products. It maximises your warehouse’s storage capacity and provides accessibility for storing varying length items.
Cantilever racking allows you to expand your current warehouse capacity by making the best use of your vertical space.
Long-span Shelving
Longspan Shelving is a heavy duty storage system that can be used in any warehouse, stockroom, garage or in any office setting. The longspan shelf space offers a strong, reliable shelf which helps clients maximise their storage within any space.
This shelving is boltless and fully adjustable, it can be altered and changed to evolve with changes in storage demands.
Small-Part Shelving
Small Part Shelving systems are the perfect storage solution for businesses that need to store and organise lightweight items for manual picking.
All the Small Part Shelving systems that we have in stock are fully adjustable and give our customers the freedom to move each shelf to the size that best suits their products.
These systems are very easily installed and are perfect for smaller hand-picked products, this system is ideal for clothing, replacement parts, and other small products.