The 4 Key Questions to Determine Your Warehouse Space Requirements.
August 20, 2024
WHAT SIZE WAREHOUSE DO YOU REALLY NEED?
One of the biggest challenges facing an operations manager is trying to determine how much space you will require when planning to move to a new location or considering an expansion.
DETERMINING YOUR WAREHOUSE SPACE: THE FOUR KEY QUESTIONS
When it comes to figuring out how much warehouse space you need, it boils down to answering four critical questions:
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How many pallet positions do you need to store?
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What is the typical height of those pallets?
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What is the clear height of your building?
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What type of material handling equipment do you intend to use?
THE IMPORTANCE OF SPACE OPTIMISATION
With rental costs rising rapidly, leasing a building larger than necessary can negatively impact your profitability. Understanding the space you need is crucial.
ANSWERING THE FOUR KEY QUESTIONS
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Number of Pallets: Knowing how many pallets you have and how you typically store and retrieve them is important when planning the layout and selecting the racking system for your new warehouse. How many do you have today? How many will you have in 3 years? In 5 years?
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Height of Pallets: The height of your pallets affects how high you can stack them. You might need to accommodate a variety of sizes. What is your average pallet height?
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Clear Height of the Building: The clear height is the usable height of your warehouse from the floor to the bottom of the ceiling trusses.
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Type of Material Handling Equipment: The type of forklift you use can greatly affect your space efficiency. Modern forklifts such as Turret or Swing-mast can operate in tighter spaces, allowing you to store more pallets in the same area compared to older forklifts such as Reach Trucks.
Which do you use?
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4 wheel counter-balance (15' wide aisle)
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3 wheel counter-balance (13' wide aisle)
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Reach truck (10' wide aisle)
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Double deep reach truck (11' wide aisle)
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Swing-mast (7' wide aisle)
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Turret truck (6' wide aisle)
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Automated pallet storage
MAXIMIZE SPACE, MINIMIZE COSTS - TAKE A LOOK AT YOUR AISLE WIDTH!
Efficient warehouse planning includes analysing how you can maximize the number of pallets you can store. One of the key spaces savers is aisle width!
Warehouse aisles in a standard racking configuration are usually 10’ wide to enable the operation of single-deep reach trucks.
Leveraging VNA (Very Narrow Aisle) forklift technology can reduce the aisles between racking to 6’ or 7’ wide allowing you to significantly reduce the square footage needed and leading to lower overhead costs and enabling you to store more pallets in your warehouse.
*You can read more about VNA systems in our in-depth blog on the subject here*
How dense can you go? Take a look at your inventory requirements!
Another important space-saving tool is selecting the right type of racking system that works the most efficiently with your inventory requirements and allows you to optimize pallet density.
Single-Deep Selective racking system is by far the most common type of racking but also the least-dense option. This is typically only efficient for a large number of SKU’s and very few pallets of the same SKU. If you have multiple pallets of the same SKU, you should take a careful look at the racking systems available to you as there are huge space savings if you can make use of denser pallet storing systems such as Double-deep selective, push-back, drive-in or pallet-flow. We love helping clients find the most efficient solution!
REAL-WORLD EXAMPLE
Here's a comparison between a traditional reach truck system and a VNA turret system for a warehouse with 5,000 pallet positions:
LET US CALCULATE YOUR WAREHOUSE SPACE
Ready to optimize your warehouse space and save on costs? Let Meriton Industries do the heavy lifting for you. Fill out our contact form with the answers to the four key questions listed above.
With this information, we will provide you with a report detailing the exact amount of space you need. Don't lease more space than necessary - get in touch by filling in the box below - and start maximizing your efficiency and savings, today.