Taking the effort to measure and configure your warehouse pallet rack design is critical, regardless of whether you’re altering the current racking arrangements or purchasing new systems. This action helps avoid expensive makeovers in the future and makes your inventory facility safe.
However, if the idea of pallet rack design is a bit confusing and overwhelming to you (as you’re unsure of where to start with this process), then this article is for you. After reading, you will thoroughly understand why this concept is crucial and explore the 10 important aspects of the design procedure.
The Necessity Of Warehouse Pallet Rack Design
Warehouse is a kind of company that stores materials or goods and often possesses high turnover efficiency. A good warehouse pallet rack design allows you to keep your facility properly organized. On the contrary, a poorly-planned layout may make warehouse picking hectic and inefficient.
Thus, a correct pallet rack design not only improves access efficiency but also saves businesses a significant amount of money on storage expenditures. Besides, there are a few more advantages when you have a proper warehouse pallet rack design:
- Facilitating access to stored items, thereby increasing productivity and saving inventory expenses.
- Improving storage management.
- Greatly enhancing inventory capacity via the utilization of both the horizontal floor and vertical space of your warehouse.
- Organizing commodities more neatly to increase operational safety.
- Preventing collisions and extrusions to ensure product quality.
- Polishing your company image.
Yet, to achieve an optimal design, you’ll need to carefully consider many variables, including pallet rack types, computer control systems, and material handling vehicles. The following part will introduce 10 crucial considerations you should account for during the pallet rack design process.
10 Aspects You Must Consider When Designing Pallet Racking Systems
When developing new pallet racking systems for your warehouse, there are 10 aspects you must take into consideration, including your facility’s capacity, workflow, and constraints. Let’s explore these elements in detail below.
#1: Stored Products
The first thing you need to consider is understanding your stored products. This includes measuring their dimensions, counting their quantities, evaluating their accessibility, and knowing their turnover. Grasping these elements allows you to build a solid foundation for your pallet rack design. Here’s why:
- Measuring products’ size and volume: Start by measuring the length, width, and height of your items to compute their size and volume. These numbers are critical as they help determine the proper pallet and pallet rack types, including their dimensions, load capacities, and even costs.
- Counting the quantity of SKUs: This figure is an important consideration when developing a warehouse pallet rack, especially in figuring out the suitable rack type. Selective pallet racks are the best option when the SKU number is high. However, if that number is low, you should employ high-density racking solutions like drive-in racking, push-back racking, and shuttle racking.
- Assessing each SKU’s accessibility: This data enables you to decide which SKUs to place closer to the docking locations or if they need high-density solutions while others require systems with high accessibility.
- Understanding products’ turnover: All inventory facilities have both quick- and slow-turnover commodities. It’s critical to recognize this aspect and understand how it affects your system’s architecture, as it can provide inputs to improve retrieval time, especially for items with quick turnover.
#2: Pallet Dimensions
When it comes to planning a pallet racking arrangement, pallet rack sizes are the most significant metrics, as they help you narrow down the size options (upright heights and rack depths) of the pallet racks. The standard pallet rack dimension (40 inches in depth by 48 inches in width) is suitable for most systems.
To choose the appropriate pallet sizes, let’s get back to the dimensions of your stored items. To ensure safety, the volume of your commodities must not exceed the pallet. The pallet sizes utilized in each region of your inventory facility should be standardized in order to ease management and prevent risks.
The characteristics of your palletized products also affect your pallet rack design. Ask yourself these questions: If the products need special environmental settings? Do they have expiration dates? Can they be stacked upon one another? Your answers are great inputs that can ease your warehouse pallet rack design significantly.
#3: Inventory Retrieval Methods
Another vital consideration is deciding your inventory retrieval methods: LIFO or FIFO. This information is required to define the sort of warehouse pallet rack design that fits your demands. In order to make a well-informed decision, let’s first understand what they are.
Last-In-First-Out (LIFO) Method
In this stock retrieval technique, the last pallet entering the warehouse is the first to leave. In other words, the LIFO approach prioritizes the last load units to reach the facility, while commodities already placed on pallet racks are kept until no other batch is ahead of them.
Pallet racking systems compatible with the LIFO method (drive-in racks, push-back racks) are often utilized to hold commodities with a long shelf life, such as electronic components or plastics, as the LIFO approach can help maximize the use of warehouse space.
First-In-First-Out (FIFO) Method
In contrast to the LIFO approach, the FIFO method is defined and operated based on how products are transferred, meaning the first unit load that enters the inventory facility is also the first to exit.
If your business requires storing items with a short shelf life (like fresh produce, fruits, and beverages), then you should design a FIFO pallet racking system (selective racks, pallet flow) to ensure they are still intact when delivered to customers.
#4: Pallet Racking Systems
Here comes one of the most paramount considerations when designing a pallet rack: picking the most well-suited kind of racking system for your warehouse. A good choice not only moves your goods off the floor to create a clear path for your staff but also makes your warehouse operations more efficient.
But the problem is, not every pallet racking system will do the trick. You’ll need a tailored solution to meet your inventory demands, and in order to determine what type it is, you must first understand your own needs. Think about your products (SKU number, item’s weight and size, and accessibility) and your pallets (required quantity and load capacity).
Having those answers is the key to selecting the optimum pallet racking type. There are various varieties you can pick from below:
- Selective racks: This pallet rack option offers easy access to a wide range of stored items, making it the most typical choice among warehouse managers. However, kindly note that it is also the least dense storage solution out there.
- Drive-in racks: What sets this system apart is its single aisle that allows forklifts to both enter and exit the racking structure for handling pallets at different levels. Drive-in racks are ideal for warehouses holding large quantities of similar products in constrained areas and perform best with the LIFO method.
- Drive-thru racks: Unlike drive-in racks, forklifts can enter drive-thru racks on one end and exit via the other end. These solutions are better suited to the FIFO approach. Yet, they demand additional storage areas, and you cannot install them against the wall like their drive-in sibling.
- Narrow aisle pallet racks: This racking structure requires just roughly two meters of clear aisles for installation, which increases storage capacity tremendously and saves a lot of warehouse space. However, you’ll need to purchase specialized forklifts to navigate these narrow aisles among the racks.
- Push-back racks: In this rack type, each pallet is put on inclined rails, enabling the newly loaded pallet to take the front position and push all following pallets to the rear of the rack. This high-density storage solution works best with the LIFO arrangement, especially when you need to hold a large number of SKUs.
Besides choosing your ideal pallet racking system, another important aspect is figuring out the optimal racking run length. For most businesses, this number is equivalent to the length of the warehouse floor area designated for the racking structure, or at least a portion of it.
#5: Warehouse Layout
Most warehouse floors are not level and include permanent barriers like columns and walls. Thus, before moving further with a comprehensive warehouse pallet rack design, you should first measure your facility layout and draft a basic plan. It’s important to address these factors in the draft design:
- Your warehouse’s overall measurements, especially the ceiling height, as this figure will show you how tall the rack uprights can reach.
- Indicating the size and position of the firefighting facilities.
- Specifying the size and placement of all doors within the warehouse.
- Noting the size and location of wall columns, as well as the distance between them.
- Marking where you can access your stored items.
Moreover, while developing the pallet rack plan, don’t forget to identify inherent dangers that may arise as a consequence of the installation process, such as restricting access to fire exits or obstructing vents. Then, mark these hazards on the draft plan to ensure that your planned racks do not impede them.
#6: Storage Environment
The sort of environment that your items demand also influences your pallet rack design, especially in terms of expenses. There are many settings in which you can store your products, such as:
- Cold environment: Typically, food or other perishable items are kept at a low temperature to preserve their quality. This type of environment requires advanced technology and staff to regulate. Thus, it is quite expensive to acquire. Not to mention, if you store food, you’ll have to comply with more stringent regulations from the FDA, like pallets must be kept at least 30 centimeters above the ground.
- Controlled environment: This type of storage environment frequently stores products like pharmaceuticals, cigars, and so on. It still requires heat control, but only to a certain extent, making its cost relatively cheaper than that of cold warehouses.
- Ambient environment: This setting is great for items whose warehouse temperature is not crucial to product integrity. In other words, these commodities don’t need to be stored at a specific temperature. Among the three, the ambient setting is the most affordable one, as there’s no need for temperature control.
#7: Material Handling Vehicles
Besides the focus on racking efficiency, you should also consider the compatibility of your new pallet rack design with other warehouse gadgets. One of them is the forklift. There are numerous types of forklifts out there, and each one of them is well-suited for a few or even a single racking system.
For example, narrow aisle forklifts only need two meters of aisle space to do their necessary tasks, making them a perfect choice for pallet racking systems with more rows, such as narrow aisle racks. On the other hand, counterbalance forklifts typically demand at least 3.6 meters of aisle area to maneuver and make turns.
Besides forklifts, there is a wide array of other material handling vehicles you can consider. Some of them include lift trucks and man-up order pickers. Each vehicle type requires a different required aisle width for operations.
So, depending on your desired capacity, you can determine the maximum number of racking rows and calculate the aisle areas between them. Once you’ve figured that number out, it’s easy to pick the suitable material handling vehicles for your warehouse.
#8: Seismic Activities
If your warehouse is located in a region prone to frequent seismic activities, then you must opt for pallet racking systems made from stronger steel (oftentimes structural steel). Additionally, wider or bigger footplates and extra anchor reinforcements are necessary in these circumstances.
Essentially, if there is a higher level of seismic activity in your warehouse’s vicinity, then your storage solution will need to be structurally stronger to withstand the movement caused by earthquakes. As a result, this leads to higher costs for your racking system.
#9: Pallet Racking Safety
The utmost priority in designing a warehouse pallet rack is to guarantee the safety of personnel working in the facility. So, this aspect is like an overall review of certain aspects above to ensure top-notch safety.
In essence, it’s important to thoroughly assess the potential risks associated with the arrangement of warehouse racks and strive to prevent them through a well-thought-out design.
Besides considering the aisle widths as mentioned above, you should ensure the rack’s load capacity must surpass the weight of the products being housed. Normally, it should exceed the weight of two pallets of goods to avoid overload.
Plus, a safe warehouse pallet rack system requires a well-executed fire design. If you’re storing flammable and explosive materials, avoid using plywood pallets at all costs. Opt for wire mesh or steel decking instead. Simultaneously, consider the positioning of fire hydrants and safety exits. Make sure that they have unobstructed access at all times.
#10: Budget Availablity
Everything you’ve planned so far can only be realized if your budget allows. Besides the pallet rack type in #4 and the storage environment in #6, there are two more aspects that affect the cost of your warehouse pallet rack design:
Pallet Racks’ Condition: New Or Used
Although purchasing second-hand pallet racking systems can result in initial cost savings, this decision often incurs higher expenses over time due to the racks’ uncertain stability and compatibility with your items and other warehouse elements.
Furthermore, some used pallet racks require an independent engineer’s evaluation, which requires significant expenses. Therefore, a good suggestion is to stick with new pallet racks. They might need more upfront investments, but everything will pay off in the long run.
Choosing Professional Businesses
Suppose you have a perfect pallet rack design for your warehouse. Now, it’s time to pick a team to turn your ideas into reality. At this stage, the worst decision you can make is to hire unprofessional racking suppliers.
What you receive from them is low-quality pallet racks and poor installation services, both of which can discontinue your warehouse operations and pose extremely high safety risks.
Hence, take the time and effort to select a professional racking supplier. Remember that high-quality pallet racks can last up to 20 years, compared to the industry norms of about 10 years. This represents a very favorable ROI in the long run.
Conclusion
In the ever-evolving logistics world, warehouse pallet rack design remains a critical component for businesses seeking to enhance their operations. Doing this task properly allows companies to future-proof their storage facilities and stay ahead of the competition.
Hopefully, this informative guide helps you understand the necessity of having a fitting warehouse pallet rack design as well as what aspects to consider during the layout planning process. Thanks for reading!
