Maximize Your Warehouse Space With Vertical Storage

If you’re in the warehouse business, you’ll certainly know the common problem most warehouse owners and managers have. That’s to maximize your warehouse storage space and minimize your operating costs. It might seem a tough challenge, but fortunately, you have a simple solution.

Most buildings calculate floor space size in two-dimensional square footage. Unless you add on and outward, you have no realistic way of expanding your horizontal area. Your warehouse space is finite unless you think outside the box. Your solution isn’t expanding outward or leasing a separate facility. That only increases your operational expenses like staffing, taxes and utilities.

Your solution to maximize warehouse storage is to think vertically. Think of the excess area you have above your current storage footprint. You likely have double or more cubic feet of unused space waiting to be filled. That’s provided you have an efficient system to maximize your vertical storage. It’s called vertical storage solutions.

Yes, your solution to the common storage problem is three-dimensional. It’s building upward, not outward. And there are efficient systems available for you to maximize warehouse floor space that brings an excellent return on investment. They’re vertical carousels and vertical racking solutions.

Vertical Storage — Your Warehouse’s Hidden Resource

Warehouse floor space is expensive. You may own your facility outright, but likely you’re the same as most warehouse and distribution center operators — you lease your building. American lease rates vary depending on location. Urban lease costs likely exceed rural spots by a significant margin. Annual lease rates for warehouse space in the United States averaged $6.67 per square foot in the first quarter of 2018. This is up nearly seven percent from the first quarter of 2017.

Let’s say you have a 20,000 square foot facility. At the $6.67 lease rate, you’d pay $133,400 each year to rent a limited amount of floor space. But imagine if you could double or triple your storage area for the same amount of rent? That could cut your actual space-usage cost by one-half or more. You’d still pay the same amount per square foot, but you’d have a far better usable-space-for-cost ratio.

Many operations maximize their vertical warehouse space by stacking pallets on top of pallets. This strategy might sound simple and straightforward. However, that technique isn’t efficient or effective. Pallet stacking forces your warehouse workers into repeated lifting, lowering and restacking pallets to get what they need to pick and fulfill orders. That’s not the best way to take advantage of vertical warehouse space.

This stack-and-restack method isn’t only time-consuming. Repeated material handling always creates safety issues like pallet tipping and load collapses. It also exposes workers to more forklift operations, and you know from experience how dangerous forklifts can be. Again, stacking is not a good way to maximize vertical warehouse space.

Some warehouses rely on fixed racking to elevate inventory loads. Conventional racks are safer than simply stacking pallets, but they also need forklift assistance. You might have lighter inventory products manually stored and retrieved. However, this places strain on your employees that can lead to muscular-skeletal disorders (MSDs) and lost time. Injuries should not be a result of poor warehouse vertical storage.

Other facilities try to solve their warehouse vertical space problems by building mezzanine floors. This gets extremely expensive. Not only do you have significant cash outlay for construction costs, you have operational interruption during the building process. Then, you have building code concerns to deal with such as structural engineering designs, electrical compliance, lighting, stairs, egress and fire restrictions. Mezzanines are not an effective vertical storage warehouse solution.

Industries Using Vertical Carousels

Vertical carousel storage is ideal for many industries. All across America, warehouse operators use vertical carousels to efficiently store their products, maximize their space and lower their operating costs. That’s an excellent return on investment. These are some of the nation’s industries that profit with vertical carousels:

• Garment and Clothing Industry: Motorized vertical carousels are ideal for garment manufacturers and clothing retailers. Everyone from big box retailers to fashion boutiques hangs coats, pants and gowns on carousel lifts where they stay fresh and wrinkle-free. That adds to efficiency as well as customer appeal.
• Print Cylinder Industry:Print cylinders are heavy and bulky items. Conventional storage systems like pallets and forklift retrieval add time and risk to placing and retrieving cylinders during print production. With vertical carousels, you can push a button and have your cylinder delivered right to your safety level.
• Carpet, Vinyl and Fabric Industry:If you store or merchandise large carpet, vinyl and fabric rolls, you know how much floor space it takes to house these products. Vertical carousels take those bulky rolls and elevate them like building stories. Retrieving stored rolls is as easy as cycling through the carousel.
• Wire and Cable Industry:Spooled products are notoriously difficult to store. Setting spools flatly on top of each other makes them difficult to retrieve. Whether you store spools of electrical wire, cable, chain, rope or tubing, you’ll get enormous efficiency in your warehouse by storing spooled products in vertical carousels.
• Tire Shop and Supply Industry: Like wire spools, round tires are inefficient to store as stacks. They take up enormous space when you stand them on the treads. Tires are also heavy, whether you’re dealing with car rubber or heavy truck wheels. Setting your tire inventory side-by-side and in carousel layers is the answer to all your tire shop and supply storage problems.
• Miscellaneous Tray Industries:If you can think of an industry that stores parts and inventory, you’re sure to find a place that will benefit by converting conventional storage into carousels. That can be automotive assembly lines where parts picking continually happens or dry goods warehouses that have bulky packing. No matter what products you store, you’re sure to benefit from vertical storage carousels.

Vertical Carousels And Racks Are Cost-effective

Your best investment to increase storage volume at an economical and efficient cost is with vertical storage carousels and vertical warehouse racking. What are vertical storage carousels and racks? They’re simply the best invention to hit the warehouse and distribution scene in the past century. Vertical carousels and racks let you load and unload products and inventory at a comfortable eye-level and then elevate them at the push of a button.

Envision your warehouse shelving on a revolving lift. All your products are placed and retrieved at one level rather than sorting through pallet stacks, forklifting them from heights or climbing stairs to the mezzanine floor. Vertical carousels have a simple up and down capability. Your warehouse staff electrically controls them to deliver products on demand — safely and dependably.

You can install and operate vertical carousels in almost every warehouse application where you want to maximize floor area and storage room. Think of vertical carousels as floor after floor of stackable space. Each level is separated by only as much space as necessary to clear the tops of your inventory. It’s conceivable to load products into your carousel and raise them right to the roof.

Benefits Of Vertical Carousels

Using vertical carousels is the best way to maximize your warehouse efficiency. Simply put, you capitalize on unused space and turn it into a productive storage area. Whether you’re handling garments, print cylinders, carpets, cables or miscellaneous trays of products, you’re sure to benefit from using vertical carousels. Let’s look at some of the ways you’ll benefit:

• Better Picking: Automated vertical carousels deliver products right to your workers’ level. No longer do they have to hunt and search while picking products. You can also add barcode item identification into the carousel system for pin-point picking accuracy.
• Reduced Costs: Vertical carousels let you hold far more inventory in your existing area. It’s like expanding your warehouse two or three times without the building costs. Not only do you save overall floor space costs, but you’ll also save on labor costs.
• Improved Time: Storage and removal time greatly increase when you invest in vertical carousels. Your workers quickly push the up or down button and have their inventory delivered to belt height. There’s no more time-consuming forklift runs or manual lifting. You save time and time is money.
• Durability:American-made carousels like those from Summit Storage Solutions are built to last. Unlike foreign competitors, Summit Storage Solutions manufactures vertical carousels right here in the United States. You get the best materials and craftsmanship that are durable and made to last.
• Efficiency: Vertical carousels immensely improve your production efficiency. Being organized with automated vertical storage lets your production team efficiently store and pick what products they need, exactly when they need them. There’s no unnecessary product movement and that’s efficient.
• Organization:Being vertically stacked with an automated control system lets you organize your product flow in a streamlined way. Vertical carousels are excellent for inventory control. That’s true whether you’re demanding materials for production or safely storing them for future use.
• Safety: One of the biggest benefits you’ll get with vertical carousels, safety is also the hardest benefit to put a price on. Conventional storage systems make warehouses accident-prone places. Vertical carousels make them safer. Saving one employee from serious injury may pay for your entire carousel investment. Besides, working safely is the morally right thing to do.

Vertical Storage With Warehouse Racking

Although Summit Storage Solutions is one of America’s leading vertical carousel manufacturers, that’s not all we make. Summit Storage Solutions has an extensive line of warehouse racks for you to benefit from. Your vertical storage solutions should encompass more than vertical carousels. You should incorporate your carousels with vertical storage racks.

How are Summit Storage Solutions vertical storage racks different from carousels? The main difference is that carousels are mechanically automated machinery that revolve while they lower and lift your inventory. Racks are static material handling equipment. They’re more on the conventional vertical storage side than carousels.

Engineers at Summit Storage Solutions focus their vertical storage rack designs on form, fit and functionality as the product foundation. We’re able to give our customers sound solutions for products on the move from one side of the facility to another. All the while, our racks provide solutions for inventory delivery. That’s whether to and from an assembly line or serving end-product users with protected delivery.

We’ve got a wide product range in our rack department. All Summit Storage Solutions racks have American designs with American materials and are made by American workers. We won’t do business any other way. Here are some of the rack products we can provide:

• Work-in-Progress / Assembly Line Racks: These sturdy metal carts move parts and pieces from storage areas and deliver them to installers on the assembly line. This lets work in progress proceed with efficiency. That amounts to time and cost savings.
• Returnable Racks:These material handling and storage solutions let you use the same racks over and over. They stay at your facility and become part of your daily team. Returnable racks can have custom designs so they meet your exact specifications.
• Shipping and Storage Racks: Summit Storage Solutions shipping and storage racks can be aluminum, steel or plastic construction. These racks can stay with your business or ship to customers as added product protection. Our shipping and storage racks also can be rigid or designed as collapsible containers.
• End-Item Racks: When you have valuable and vulnerable products shipped to end-use customers, you always worry about in-transit damage or some form of loss. Summit Storage Solutions end-item racks can be custom designed specifically for protecting and shipping your motorcycles, ATVs or whatever product you handle.
• Custom Stackable Racks: Custom racks that vertically stack might be the perfect solution for your warehouse space maximization plan. These specialty racks are portable so you can transfer them anywhere you’d like. Additionally, they’re designed as custom pieces that add value to your vertical storage. Customization is a key benefit you get by partnering with Summit Storage Solutions.