The forklift truck is a vital tool to help employees raise and move heavy weight materials and goods with speed and efficiency without straining their bodies. How a company uses this machinery can considerably affect its profitability.
A common storage technique is Free Stacking Pallets. This is a way to utilize your forklift which is easy and economical. Free Stacking Pallets is placing one pallet on top of another to make a stack of goods. This is a stable storage system and is suggested when handling large amounts of the same product, or many pallets of the same height and dimensions. The drawback of this method is that it just enables access to the objects placed last, so it does not enable a First In First Out system.
It is important to have a pallet racking method which involves the stable storage of different sized pallets. Utilizing a Last In First Out or First In First Out method, will enable for easy access of any pallet. It enables the rack to grow and change shape depending upon every day requirements. This technique requires aisles which are wide enough to allow a forklift to maneuver easily and to freely access the racks. The downside is that this specific system means fewer pallets can be handled in the environment. This might not matter if there is sufficient space available.
Narrow aisle racking is like pallet racking in that it allows for a Last In First Out or First In First Out system. The difference in the method is how the special narrow forklift is used. This means that smaller areas are required between the aisles of pallets than in the Pallet Racking method. The benefit is that much more product could be kept in the same area. The downside is that you would have to transition to a new truck if you already own a typical lift truck. The expenditure of obtaining special machines may be a deterrent to adopting this particular system of storage.
It is essential to use your forklift truck to its full potential. It pays to consider your time expenditure in retrieval and storage of pallets. After that you can determine whether there are more effective means to use your lift truck to speed up the process or to increase the usable space of your units. Greater efficiency means greater profitability.