If your business has grown significantly and you are thinking of moving to a larger warehouse, you might want to think about optimising your existing space first. Here are some simple ways of maximising the space in your warehouse.
- Install a mezzanine floor to maximise your storage space
One of the simplest and most popular ways of optimising space in your warehouse is to introduce a mezzanine floor. Mezzanine floors are freestanding structures that create a second floor within your warehouse space, significantly increasing storage space without having to move premises, and because they are freestanding they can be raised and removed without altering your existing space.
- Create a raised area for your office
To maximise the space in your warehouse, you shouldn’t only think about how to more efficiently store your goods, but also how the staff areas in your warehouse are used in relation to your storage space. Office spaces, break rooms and other facilities are an important part of any warehouse, however, they can take a significant amount of floor space away from storage. Using a mezzanine floor to raise these spaces can free up more of the warehouse floor for your goods, while still providing you with the administrative spaces that you need.
- Make great use of pallet racking
Pallet racking has been around for a very long time and has proven time and again to be one of the best ways to maximise your storage space. Pallet racking is a storage system where materials are placed on pallets and then stored on horizontal rows with multiple levels. While this is the simple explanation of what pallet racking is, there are in fact many different types of pallet racking systems that might be right for your business:
- Selective Pallet Racking
Selective pallet racking is the most basic form of the storage system. It works by constructing racks in aisles throughout your warehouse. Pallets are then placed along these racks one pallet deep so that you always have easy access to every single pallet in your storage. - Double Deep Pallet Racking
Double deep pallet racking is similar to selective pallet racking, except that instead of storing pallets one deep, they are stored two deep. This means that in order to access the back row of pallets the front row needs to be moved. The major advantage of this is that it reduces the amount of aisles, which is unused space, and almost doubles the number of storage spaces. - Drive-in Pallet Racking
Drive-in pallet racking gets rid of aisles altogether and stores pallets in a single continuous block. When a pallet is needed a forklift is driven into the rack to take out the last box that was placed inside. This is an excellent solution for businesses that have fast moving stock and need to maximise their use of floor space. The disadvantage is that the forklift can only access the last pallets placed into the rack, which means that it is not a useful system for warehouses with slower moving products. - Narrow Aisle Pallet Racking
Narrow aisle pallet racking is another way of maximising the amount of storage space available by reducing the amount of space delegated to aisles. Because the aisles are so narrow the warehouse will have to use turret trucks or automated stacker cranes to access the stored pallets.