Optimize Current Footprint
Manufacturing operations typically have a lot of heavy, complicated, fixed equipment. As the need for industrial space optimization increases, it is not ideal to move to a new location; the effort and cost associated with a manufacturing facility relocation can be prohibitive. By storing items on shelving or pallets, manufacturers are missing out on the storage space above floor-level load. Installing industrial racking can double, triple, or quadruple industrial storage space, depending on the facility's height.
How Unex Can Help
By utilizing carton flow in a modular rack, like SpanTrack in FlowCell, facilities can gain up to 80% more space due to the compression of the pick window. When an employee is picking from a pallet, all locations on the pallet must be accessible by the employee. All those locations must remain accessible even if employees have already picked them because the physical pallet must remain. SpanTrack requires only one static location for each item, and the rest flow to that location automatically. This practice greatly limits the need for costly open space around pallets and potentially dangerous reaches for far-away products.
The same can be said for pallet positions in a rack. That position becomes fixed when beams are set up to hold full pallets. While utilizing ground-level space, regardless of how full the pallet may be, the space it occupies is constant. Reaching into racks to pick from the rear of pallets is difficult, dangerous, and costly. With SpanTrack, the product always flows to the front, and the fixed storage space is the depth of the lane, which allows for substantially greater density where it counts: the pick face and the overall height.
Optimize Lineside Storage
Storing bulk items lineside takes up valuable real estate, especially if you have minimal material requirements. Sometimes it’s necessary to produce subcomponents to leverage machine efficiency or minimize setup costs. So, where should the rest be stored?
How Unex Can Help
Right-sizing storage products and equipment is a fantastic way to free up real estate where it matters in a manufacturing facility – lineside. By storing only what is necessary for an hour, shift, or production run on the line, manufacturing facilities can achieve reduced storage space requirements, a shortened production line, and improved productivity.
Utilizing a lineside rack like FlowCell, optimized for a manufacturing line’s specific needs, creates dedicated, sequenced flow lanes for the optimal number of products. Lineside racks prevent the overstocking of parts in the most critical space in a facility and shift it to fewer sensitive areas like the warehouse or manufacturing supermarket.
Resources
Explore All
Optimizing Space for Over 60 Years: Tips From the Experts
