Answer
When considering a capital asset purchase, such as a storage carousel or shuttle, any business owner or purchasing director must consider the value to the business and return on investment. Automated storage solutions, in my opinion, offer one of the most cost and time-efficient solutions for production-based businesses.
Of course, I’m biased, as my team and I have been buying, refurbishing and selling storage carousels and shuttles for over 30 years. I will, however, illustrate through this article 5 of the top ways I believe an automated storage carousel will deliver tangible benefits to your bottom line.
1. Accurate stock control
Any business that holds stock, including parts or end products, is locking up their cash. Holding too much stock and you risk poor cashflow, hold too little and production bottlenecks could occur if parts aren’t available when needed.
The answer is careful stock control.
Automated storage solutions allow you to not just control stock, but to proactively manage the volume on hand.
- You can place stock orders in line with demand –
all without physically checking the shelf as our software provides real time
stock volume reports. - If you have parts on a regular order cycle you
can spot check if the volume is appropriate for your needs, or if too much or
too little is on hand. - You can monitor the usage of inventory –
identifying if anything is redundant. This allows you to proactively return
this to the supplier, or liquidate it in another way.
2. Preventing and deterring theft
A little widget here, a small box of parts there … it all adds up, and the one who is paying the price is you, the business owner. It’s all too tempting when workers are looking at row after row of small parts – surely nobody will miss a couple of items? And, in many cases they wouldn’t be missed – except of course on your profit and loss account!
For some manufacturers this is a very serious issue. Depending on what you’re producing those small parts can cost hundreds, or even thousands of pounds each. You cannot completely restrict access to them, after all the team need them to do their job – but you do need a level of control.
Security features on carousels and Kardex shuttles range from:
- Restricting access to certain shelves to
specific users, and - Tracking of parts and who picked them
3. Reduced risk from worker injuries
The Labour Force Survey in 2018/19 (LFS) reported a total of 581,000 workers sustained a non-fatal injury at work. 138,000 of these resulted in more than 7 days absence. 20% of all non-fatal injuries were as a result of handling, lifting or carrying, a further 8% from fall from a height.
Any business using static racking for storage of parts, where staff are required to manually pick, lift and carry items, is at greater risk.
Using a storage carousel or shuttle will deliver the part or product directly to the staff member, at a height that is safe to lift from. Eliminating the need to bend or stretch to reach.
4. Increased productivity
Look around your production space. Chances are your stores are in one area and production another. How many steps will it take for a worker to move from their station, to the stores, find and select the part they need and return to their station? How many times per shift do they need to repeat this process?
It’s a common issue. Racking by it’s nature is cumbersome, as you’ll see in point 5 below. Most factories will install it all in one place, often positioned to the side or rear of the production space. That means for some workers it’s a long way from their workstation.
Now imagine having one or more storage shuttles, positioned closer to the areas where the parts are needed. A worker steps to the machine, requests the item they need (no more time-consuming hunting) picks up the part and returns to their station in a fraction of the time.
I don’t think I need to explain this any further.
5. Decreased factory footprint
Floorspace is in high demand. One of the largest overheads of any business is the factory you occupy, and you want to be sure you’re making the most of every square metre.
Now add up the area used by your racking. That’s a lot of floorspace!
If you’re growing your business or squeezing production into a small area you could free up this valuable commodity, simply by storing ‘up’ rather than ‘out’.
Storage carousels and shuttles make the most of the production footprint, by storing parts vertically. Using the full head height of your building will give you a higher return on investment per square meter of space. Shuttles and carousels can be built up to 18m.
Learn more about how Linpic can help you with automated storage here.