Incremental improvements in your warehouse efficiency can make a big difference in your bottom line over time. Relatively small savings in labor costs, slightly improved storage density and higher SKU velocity can all compound to increase your profitability. 

In other words, if you systematically look for ways to routinely make small improvements, they add up to large gains over time.

Depending on your operation, pallet flow rack may be an excellent way to make meaningful improvements to your warehouse efficiency. 

What Is Pallet Flow Rack?

If you’re unfamiliar with pallet flow rack, it is simply an inclined racking system where the back of the racks are slightly higher than the front. All pallets are loaded from the back and retrieved from the front. As pallets are retrieved, the pallets behind them advance down the sloped structure.  This type of configuration adds a host of advantages:

Maximize Storage Density

With today’s warehouse costs, it’s important to use every cubic foot of your capacity. If your operation handles large volumes of the same product, pallet flow rack can help you greatly improve storage density by eliminating multiple aisles in your layout, since you only need forklift access to the front and rear storage faces.  In many cases you can increase your storage density by more than 50%.

Reduce Labor Costs

Labor costs are always a concern for warehouse managers and they are only getting higher. With selective rack systems you have much more travel time as forklifts traverse aisles.  With pallet flow rack, your employees are placing or retrieving pallets in two designated aisles, greatly improving your efficiency. 

This not only takes less time, it can reduce the hours on you your forklifts, stretch your battery charge intervals and reduce wait times in congested warehouses. 

Increase Safety

Fewer forklift trips and well defined forklift traffic patterns can improve safety for both forklift operators and pedestrians. Most warehouse accidents are forklift related, and pallet flow racks can help you minimize that exposure by making your operation less forklift intensive. 

Improve Product Rotation

Selective and drive in racking systems are not the most efficient way to store large quantities of pallets with the same SKUs, especially if they are subject to spoilage or have any kind of expiration date. 

Pallet flow racks are inherently a first-in /first-out (FIFO) system, since product is loaded from the back and retrieved from the front. This ensures that the oldest products get selected first, while the newest products will be the last to be selected. 

Talk To a Racking Expert

If you have any questions about implementing a pallet flow system, or increasing your warehouse efficiency in general, give us a call today!