The forklift has become a vital piece of machinery that could lift and move products and heavy materials with both efficiency and speed. The way a company makes use of this machinery can significantly affect its profitability.
Free stacking pallets is the most common storage method. Using this storage system is both easy and economical for your lift truck. Free Stacking Pallets involves placing one pallet on top of another to make a stack of products. This is a stable storage system and is recommended when dealing with huge amounts of the same goods, or many pallets of the same dimensions and height. The drawback of this method is that it just allows access to the objects put last, so it does not enable a First In First Out system.
It is vital to have a pallet racking system which involves the stable storage of different sized pallets. Using a First In First Out or Last In First Out system, will allow for easy access of any pallet. It allows the rack to grow and change shape depending upon every day needs. This specific system needs aisles that are sufficiently wide to allow a lift truck to maneuver easily and to freely access the racks. The downside is that this method means less pallets can be handled within the environment. This might not matter if there is sufficient space available.
Like Pallet Racking, the technique called Narrow Aisle Racking enables a First In First Out or Last In First Out method. It varies in that a special narrow forklift is used. This means that smaller areas are necessary between the aisles of pallets than in the Pallet Racking way. The advantage is that more goods can be kept in the same area. The downside is that you will have to transition to a different kind of truck if you already own a typical lift truck. The expenditure of obtaining special machines may be a deterrent to implementing this specific technique of storage.
Utilizing your lift truck to its fullest potential is important as it pays to analyze your retrieval costs and storage costs of pallets. Afterward you could find out whether there are more efficient means to use your lift truck to accelerate the process or to increase the usable space of your units. Greater efficiency means bigger productivity.