Tag: racking

No matter how difficult a product is to store and pick, improvement can always be found, says Edward Hutchison, Managing Director of BITO Storage Systems.

Some items are more difficult to pick than others. Often these items are stored the way they always have been. But that is never an excuse not to investigate how storage efficiency and picking productivity can be improved. Many operations that have straightforward pallets and cases also deal in irregular shapes and outsizes that present their own challenges. Some operations deal only in items that are difficult to store and, more particularly, difficult to pick.

Picking individual or multiple sheet material from racking is a good example. One recent application involved installing a roller-tracked location solution that combines standard BITO components and specially designed parts in a ‘letter-box’ style rack (pictured), where sheets can be picked either individually or in a collection. The racking allows multiple sheets to sit in a location that has sufficient clearance to allow air to be blown in via a hose to raise a delicate, thin single sheet to allow it to be picked individually.

Garment and apparel is a fast growing ecommerce sector requiring a mix of solutions, from hanging garment conveyors to shoe box storage and shelving for folded garments. The latter, while not presenting an obviously awkward storage challenge, can often create a problem where polythene covered individual garments easily slip out of a shelf. BITO created an essentially simple solution to this issue with modules of shelving designed to fit neatly between two uprights on the ground level of a racking structure. The shelves have a divider with a vertical return at the pick face to create a retained location that can hold a pile of individual, polythene wrapped garments securely, preventing them from sliding around during picking, while providing a gap that is wide enough to make an easy pick.

Providing locations for large and outside pallets and goods, which many facilities block stack on floors, is another route to improved storage and picking. Handling can be made easier by adding a bottom rail in the rack to lift the larger pallets off the floor and creating a rack location with a higher first beam level will make it easy to store and pick bulky, outsized items.

Sometimes odd shaped items are stored in stillages that, being heavy themselves, are often block stacked on floors. Placing stillages in a racking system however gives better utilisation of the total space and also allows use of the full height of the warehouse. A system comprising racking designed with a rail on each side of the uprights, running from front to back, will allow lift truck drivers to place a stillage in a fashion similar to a single-deep drive-in rack. This is a far more space efficient solution than using beams to rest stillages on, as is done in a traditional pallet-style rack.

More and more unusually sized items are being moved from the warehouse floor into racking, where they are better protected and can be more easily located, picked and handled. Even 6-tonne gas turbine engines can be racked, as demonstrated by an award-winning project that included an impressive three-level high gas turbine engine rack, providing 72 locations, served by a wire-guided side loader. This was created from a bespoke BITO design, using standard beams and uprights, enables engines weighing up to 6-tonnes, and stored on 1-tonne pallets to be located on the first beam level as well as ground level. The top-level locations can hold up to 4-tonnes. In this instance, the client had never previously racked engines, and it was also the heaviest pallet that BITO has ever stored.

If you think your product is too difficult to store in a better way, think again. With the right expertise, experience, and access to a broad range of storage systems and state of the art techniques, there will always be a way to improve your operation.

The renowned supermarket chain brand Waitrose & Partners has increased its storage capacity with the extension of its facilities in Magna Park (Milton Keynes, UK) to consolidate its position as a leader in its sector in the British market. To do so, it has relied on AR Racking, a European benchmark in storage systems.

The new extension consists of an intralogistics solution with AR Racking’s adjustable pallet racking that achieved an added storage capacity for 13,604 UK pallets. It is a storage system that will provide the warehouse with great agility in loading and unloading operations, with direct and immediate access to the goods. A solution perfectly adapted to the increase in demand for consumer goods and the demand on delivery times.

Waitrose is owned by the John Lewis Partnership retail group, the largest example of an employee-owned business in the UK with over 80,000 members. “Our aim is for Waitrose to remain the supermarket chain most valued by the British people and to do that we need a logistics infrastructure that allows us to hold more stock of products that can be delivered in less time,” explained Lawrence Ireson, Project Manager of the John Lewis Partnership. “We knew that AR Racking would meet their promises on this strategic extension.”

“This is a project that is tailored to the client’s needs and characteristics,” said Mike Smyth, UK Key Account Manager at AR Racking. “The racks have a paint finish in Waitrose’s corporate green colour.”

“We have strictly adhered to the delivery and installation schedules agreed with Waitrose, whose standards are exacting,” added Jim Albans, AR Racking’s UK Project Manager.

AR Racking, based in Maidenhead, has a well-established presence in the UK thanks to a service tailored to customers’ needs and the ability to deliver large projects to tight deadlines.

BITO Storage Systems has taken on additional staff and developed new services at its UK subsidiary to support the storage and order picking projects required by sectors emerging from the pandemic. The Nuneaton-based company has doubled the number of staff in its warehouse that serves its online web store shop and the online page-turn catalogue.

BITO is executing in excess of 25% more orders than last year. “Having planned on a turnover of £15m for this year, we are currently forecasting above £20m, which clearly demonstrates a significant uplift in business levels,” said Edward Hutchison, Managing Director of BITO Storage Systems.

“BITO has maintained a consistent growth trend over the years but, more importantly, we make regular modest profits averaging about 5% year-on-year. With the family-run BITO GmbH group reinvesting profits back into the business, this ensures we remain a solid, financially stable and reliable partner for our clients into the future.”

To ensure growing order volumes are fulfilled, BITO is bringing more full load deliveries into its Nuneaton hub, both for restocking the warehouse and to crossdock customer orders. Hutchison said: “BITO is shipping more consignments out of the warehouse than ever – in fact throughput has doubled, resulting in an increase from previously receiving two lorry loads of stock a week to now getting an average of four. In addition, the cut-off in terms of order value that we can fulfil direct from the warehouse has doubled to around £5,000.”

Crossdocking is a new development for BITO allowing the company to, for example, send several incoming pallets of plastic containers direct to a customer’s site on local transport. In addition to reducing paperwork and speeding delivery, the customer is provided with a more precise delivery slot, making it easier for them to book in their delivery.

A booming warehouse requirement across Europe is resulting in issues around steel price increases, availability and production capacity. BITO however is reporting significant growth not only in the UK but across the BITO GmbH group itself, which is based in Meisenheim, Germany and has subsidiaries across Europe and the world.

“The BITO group is more productive than ever,” reported Hutchison. “It has increased production capacity through extending shift patterns and by investing in additional production facilities outside of Germany as part of strategic production capacity growth strategy over the next 18 months.”

BITO’s GmbH’s capabilities provide the UK subsidiary with significant benefits, as Hutchison explained: “We are noticing that larger companies often tend to be international themselves. If they wish to source from a UK-based company for both domestic and cross border sites then BITO is well positioned to operate internationally on their behalf, thanks to the Group’s subsidiaries across Europe and the world.

“Having the facility to sell back into Europe directly, safely, legally and without VAT issues gives BITO in the UK an advantage over many other domestic suppliers. Furthermore, we are able to operate with the new EN codes for racking, which apply across Europe, and are recognised internationally, so we are not limited only to SEMA regulations.”

With business optimism riding high at BITO, Hutchison concluded: “Our confidence factor is underscored by an investment in bolstering our installation team and increasing staff numbers – both in our warehouse and in project management division. We have also revamped our Experience Centre showroom at Nuneaton and further developed our YouTube channel adding informative new films. This makes it easier than ever to find the right solutions to meet a broad range of storage and order picking challenges for retail, manufacturing and logistics operations returning to business normal as well as new sectors that have emerged from the pandemic.”