Picking, packing and dispatching 3,500 customer orders every day in a 118,000m2 distribution centre is a constant challenge. However, Skechers makes it happen at their facility near Liège, Belgium, with a fleet of UniCarriers trucks to help.
Cold stores, warehouses where frozen goods are stored, can reach temperatures as low as -35°C and are some of the most demanding environments that forklifts can operate in.
Fortunately, most forklift suppliers offer machines that are capable of working reliably in such cold temperatures. Freezing environments can make steel more brittle, make the oil and lubricants more viscous and reduce the truck's battery capacity, but adaptations can be made to forklifts to reduce the impact of these issues, ensuring both safety and reliability.
Since the advent of containerisation and the forklift truck, the pallet has become vital for the storage and transport of goods around the world. Palletising goods make a lot of sense - pallets are a consistent size, meaning businesses can be sure they will fit in their racking, and ensuring that all kinds of forklifts will be able to pick them up.
Pallets are also lightweight and strong in comparison to other storage and handling solutions. Pallets are everywhere, but what happens if the goods you handle are much, much bigger than the standard Europallet?
When purchasing new forklift trucks, it's tempting to get caught up comparing different options on the purchase price alone. The graphic above should hopefully show you why that's not the best option.
Lithium-ion, or Li-ION batteries are everywhere these days — in your smartphone, in your laptop, possibly even on your bicycle or in your car. However, they're probably not in the forklift trucks your company uses for materials handling.
"The representation of the behaviour or characteristics of one system through the use of another system, especially a computer program designed for the purpose."
When it comes to making efficient use of space in your warehouse, mobile racking is one of the leading options. With this storage system, the racking itself stands on motor-driven wheels which move in rails built into the floor.
All trucks require maintenance sometimes, especially in high-intensity materials handling operations. The important thing is how quickly you can get the truck back in operation afterwards. This is where your service supplier's first visit fix rate becomes important.
Proper forklift training can achieve things that every warehouse manager wants – increased safety, better employee satisfaction and retention, and heightened productivity, amongst many other things. However, good training comes at a price, and involves taking time out of the working day, so there’s often people in an organization who refuse to prioritise it.
When planning a new warehouse, there's a huge amount of different factors that have to be considered - the type of items being stored, the available floor space and height in the building itself, and the correct storage system that will both maximise the use of the space available but also make it easy to access pallets.
