INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT: Keeping warehouses moving - Total Supply Chain Summit | Forum Events Ltd
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  • INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT: Keeping warehouses moving

    By PALLITE

    As warehouses across the country look for new ways to boost capacity and increase efficiency to help manage ever-growing customer demand, a Northamptonshire-based expert has come up with an innovative way to do both.

    PALLITE® are known for their lightweight yet strong paper transit packaging solutions including pallets, pallet boxes and layer pads. But the company’s latest innovation is a shelving and storage system that is having a huge impact on the warehousing industry.

    PIX® consolidates pick-faces into a single storage unit, freeing up under-used space and allowing warehouse managers to increase their yield while remaining flexible to supply chain demands.

    Combining multiple pick-faces into a single pallet footprint at ground level increases pick efficiency by reducing pick times and walk sequences. With research suggesting workers in some warehouses can walk more than 10 miles a day, it’s easy to see why this is needed. As next and same-day delivery becomes more commonplace in major manufacturer and e-tailers’ offerings to customers, every second lost in picking an order may mean the difference between it being on time or late.

    Areas for labels and barcodes, and moveable dividers allowing the space to be flexed around different products, help reduce the 15% of time the average picker spends searching for products, and reduce the chances of mistakes being made.

    PALLITE®’s customers are noticing the difference. A Kuehne + Nagel spokesperson said: “PALLITE® PIX®provides us with a flexible, adjustable option in contrast to more conventional, rigid or fixed methods. It allows the ability to stretch and shrink, add or remove, or expand and retract, at a moment’s notice. This agility is unprecedented and introducing it into our operations has delighted our customers. We can now rapidly adapt to any seasonality and volume peaks and have managed to condense multiple, existing operations into a more compact area.”

    They are not the only ones to have noticed PIX®’s appeal. Earlier this year, PIX® scooped the UK Warehousing Association’s Innovation Award for its “bold and innovative response to the challenging market”.

    David Rose, PALLITE® Innovations Director, said: “PIX® is a cost-effective way of making better use of space, without needing to invest in more expensive and permanent options. The ability to flex the size of a pick location is crucial for modern warehouses where supply and demand changes almost daily. Being able to store 72 products in a 2.5-metre bay instead of 10 reduces the cost per pick, as well as having the added benefit of freeing up space to use for other customers.”

    Like all PALLITE® products, PIX® is lightweight, with a ‘flat-pack’ design, allowing it to be built, moved and dismantled with ease. And yet it remains strong, with units capable of holding up to 500kg each, and individual pick-faces able to hold 50kg.

    To find out more about the PIX® range, call 01933 283920 or email enquiries@pallite.co.uk.

    AUTHOR

    Stuart O'Brien

    All stories by: Stuart O'Brien

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