How Pallet Conveyors Can Help A Warehouse

Warehouses run on efficiency. They rely on have an optimal layout, the right kind of pallet racking, well trained staff, and more. Part of that more is conveyor systems. Conveyor systems can move goods around warehouses relatively quickly and efficiently with little to no interaction with warehouse staff. This helps improve both warehouse productivity and safety.

But most of the time when we think of conveyors systems, we think about smaller systems designed to move individual goods or boxes. These may be simple gravity conveyors or more complex conveyor systems designed with motors and multiple branches. We don’t often think about conveyor systems designed to move whole pallets of goods. However, these can be extremely useful.

Like smaller conveyor systems, pallet conveyor systems are a way to easily move goods around a warehouse, just at a larger scale. If your warehouse doesn’t have pallet conveyors installed into your warehouse yet though, you may be reluctant due to the price, however, there are a number of ways a pallet conveyor system can help a warehouse.

Pallet Conveyors Are Great For Receiving And Shipping

While pallet conveyors have a number of applications throughout a warehouse, they become extremely useful in the receiving and shipping areas of a warehouse.

They’re great for receiving because workers can quickly and easily move pallets onto the conveyors and disperse them throughout the warehouse without having to dedicate a forklift to driving that far; the forklift just needs to get the goods of a truck and onto the conveyor.

For shipping, this system works in reverse. Pallets are loaded onto conveyors then moved to the shipping area where individual items can then be picked or the whole pallet shipped out.

All Of This Saves On Forklifts

Forklifts are expensive, and not everybody can drive one, so it’s important that they’re used as effectively as possible. And this is where pallet conveyors can help.

Instead of having a forklift drive the entire length of a warehouse to move a single pallet, they can just deliver the pallet to a conveyor and let the conveyor do the work of moving it across the warehouse where is can be collected at its next destination.

This, of course, frees up forklifts to be doing others tasks instead of commuting across the warehouse to move a single pallet. In turn, a warehouse may be able to reduce the total amount of forklifts it needs and its staffing requirements.

This Also Increases Safety

Warehouse safety is of vital importance, and working around forklifts can be dangerous. By reducing the amount of driving forklifts need to do and the areas forklifts need to move through, overall safety is increased. Pallet conveyor systems shift the movement of pallets and other goods to designated areas where they purposefully won’t interact with warehouse workers, making their operation safer and easier.

All of this safety also means more safety for any products stored on pallets as well. While the safety of workers is the most important thing in warehouses, collisions and near misses can also damage the goods stored on pallets. Making a warehouse safe for humans also makes it safe for the products being stored too.

No Humans, No Human Error

Even warehouses with that are compliant with safety regulations and have the safest warehouses have accidents. Although the goal should always be zero accidents, human error happens. By taking the human factor out of moving pallets longer distances, the error is also taken away, whether that’s error that creates an accident or error that puts a pallet in the wrong place.

Good warehouse workers are, perhaps, the most valuable part of a logistics based business, but it’s important to use them where they’re most effective by doing things that can’t be done by a machine or an automated process. Which is where pallet conveyors come in.

The goal isn’t to completely eliminate warehouse workers, it’s to use them as effectively as possible while also ensuring the safety of those workers. There are a number of warehouse storage and handling solutions out there that achieve those goals. If you’d like to know more, we can help.