The lift truck is a very important tool to help employees lift and transport heavy weight materials and products with speed and efficiency without injuring their bodies. How a business uses this machinery could significantly affect its profitability.
Free stacking pallets is the most popular storage system. Utilizing this storage method is both easy and economical for your lift truck. Free Stacking Pallets involves positioning one pallet on top of another to create a stack of goods. This is a stable storage method and is recommended when dealing with large amounts of the same product, or numerous pallets of similar dimensions and height. The drawback of this technique is that it only allows access to the things put last, so it does not enable a First In First Out system.
It is essential to have a pallet racking technique which involves the stable storage of various sized pallets. Using a Last In First Out or First In First Out method, will enable for easy access of any pallet. It allows the rack to change shape and grow depending upon every day requirements. This system needs aisles which are adequately wide to enable a lift truck to freely access the racks and easily maneuver. The downside is that this specific technique means fewer pallets could be handled within the environment. This might not matter if there is adequate space available.
Narrow aisle racking is similar to pallet racking in that it allows for a Last In First Out or First In First Out method. The difference in the method is how the special narrow lift truck is used. This means that smaller areas are required between the aisles of pallets than in the Pallet Racking way. The advantage is that more goods can be kept in the same space. The disadvantage is that you would have to transition to a different type of truck if you already own a standard forklift truck. The expenditure of acquiring special equipment may be a deterrent to implementing this particular technique of storage.
Utilizing your forklift to its fullest potential is essential as it pays to analyze your retrieval costs and storage costs of pallets. Then you can determine whether there are more effective means to use your lift truck in order to speed up the process or to increase the usable area of your units. Greater efficiency means greater productivity.