Pallet racking is often described in terms of selectivity and density. These are two things in pallet racking that need to be considered and weighed up when deciding what kind of pallet racking will be the best storage solution for a given warehouse. Different kinds of pallet racking are set up to do things differently, so it’s important to find the right kind of pallet racking for your situation.
What Does Density Mean In Pallet Racking?
Density of pallet racking storage refers to how much the racking can store compared to how much “empty” space is needed in return. In most cases this empty space is the need for the pallet racking to have aisle access for forklifts and other materials handling equipment. A higher storage density is desirable because warehouse space is expensive. The more warehouse space that can be taken up with actual storage, rather than aisles and other operational needs, the more efficient that warehouse’s use of space is.
Basically speaking, warehouse space is always at a premium, so it’s important to use that space as well as possible.
Multi-deep styles of pallet racking, like drive-in pallet racking, are an example of a dense pallet racking system. By eliminating the need to as many aisles between racking and instead having a design that allows forklifts to drive into the pallet racking itself, more warehouse space is used for storage. This is similar with push-back pallet racking. Here pallets are stored as deep as needed, with retrieval of pallets made easier because they slide into place when the pallet in front of them is removed.
Denser pallet storage is desirable in situations where a warehouse wants to store many pallets of the same SKU. In situations like this it’s usually not a problem for pallets to be blocked in by the pallet in front of them, because the pallet in front is the same SKU anyway. This suits larger warehouses with a larger volume of goods or warehouses where there may not be large throughput.
What Does Selectivity Mean In Pallet Racking?
On the opposite end of density is selectivity. Selectivity refers to how accessible a given pallet is on the racking. Selective pallet racking is the obvious example of this. With selective pallet racking, every pallet position is can be accessed via a forklift. What this means, however, is that more aisles are needed so that each of these pallets can get accessed. This extra aisle space is space that isn’t being directly used for storage of pallets.
When speaking about selectivity though, there are types of pallet racking that have a bit more density that simple selective pallet racking. Double deep pallet racking, for example, stores pallets two deep. This reduces selectivity somewhat, but also doubles the storage density when compared to selective pallet racking. For some situations, this may be desirable.
More selective storage is usually a good idea when storing a high variety of SKUs and each of those SKUs only has one or only a few pallets. Because there aren’t many pallets of each SKU, the extra density afforded by multi-deep storage is lost due to empty pallet positions not being utilised.
It’s Important To Weigh Up Selectivity And Density
When determining whether to use a denser storage option or a more selective storage option, it’s important to consider the way a given warehouse operates, how many goods it has, and how many of each good it has. It’s not a simple matter of just going with the most selective or the most dense storage. Going too far in either direction can make a warehouse run sub-optimally.
If you have questions about what type of pallet racking is right for your storage needs. Feel free to contact us.
