The forklift truck is a very important machinery to help workers raise and transport heavy weight materials and products with efficiency and speed without injuring their bodies. How a company uses this machine could considerably affect its productivity.
A popular storage technique is Free Stacking Pallets. This is a way to use your forklift that is both economical and easy. Free Stacking Pallets is placing one pallet over another to make a stack of goods. This is a stable storage technique and is recommended when dealing with huge amounts of the same product, or many pallets of the same height and dimensions. The disadvantage of this specific technique is that it just enables access to the things put last, so it does not enable a First In First Out system.
It is important to have a pallet racking system that involves the stable storage of various sized pallets. Using a Last In First Out or First In First Out method, would enable for easy access of any pallet. It permits the rack to change shape and grow depending upon daily needs. This particular system needs aisles which are wide enough to allow a forklift to maneuver easily and to freely access the racks. The downside is that this method means fewer pallets could be handled within the environment. This might not matter if there is enough space available.
Like Pallet Racking, the method called Narrow Aisle Racking allows a Last In First Out or First In First Out method. It varies in that a special narrow lift truck is utilized. This means that smaller areas are necessary between the aisles of pallets than in the Pallet Racking method. The benefit is that much more product can be kept in the same area. The downside is that you will have to transition to a new truck if you already own a typical lift truck. The expenditure of obtaining special machinery may be a deterrent to adopting this specific method of storage.
Utilizing your lift truck to its fullest potential is important since it pays to consider your retrieval costs and storage costs of pallets. Then you could determine whether there are more effective means to utilize your forklift to accelerate the process or to increase the usable area of your units. Greater efficiency equals bigger productivity.