Godrej Material Handling offers versatile Forklifts for new generation warehouses to maximise space utilisation.
There are many different pressures on businesses that use racking systems for storage of palletised goods. But irrespective of the business or industry, one common challenge all of them face is maximising the utilisation of warehouse space. Since the goods to be handled is a given for a particular business, space utilisation often boils down to the racking system and handling equipment used. All types of fork trucks require space to operate in and it´s a trade-off between reaching as high as possible, while keeping the required aisle space to a minimum.
Constrained solutions
Different lift truck makers have invented different solutions to address these challenges and over the years a wide variety of machines have evolved to serve in racking systems. Warehouses thus, typically use counterbalance forklifts for fast movement in the open areas and outdoors to load and unload goods carriers, while they use stackers, reach trucks and man-up machines in the racking system. A variety of fork trucks at one site involves training operators to use different equipment, building different maintenance skills and managing a variety in spares inventory to service these machines. Not to mention the often high capex involved and the productivity impact of having to use different machines for different tasks in a warehouse.
Innovative approach
Imagine if you could get just one type of forklift that could combine the indoor-outdoor capability, operator friendliness, productivity and low operating cost of the conventional counterbalance forklift with the narrow aisle, high reach capability of a stock picker?
A forklift which allows you to pick pallets from a lorry, transfer them to the aisle, stack them up to 12 m high and does this in an aisle less than 2 m wide. Godrej offers a range of such forklifts. They are known as Articulated Forklifts. Over the last few years, Godrej have supplied over 250 of these machines across industry sectors in India. These machines have favourably impacted warehouse operations cost of their owners while bumping up productivity.
Case Study
A auto component manufacturer in Chennai, had two warehouses at site and was using conventional, selective racking with 2600 mm wide aisles and they had deployed a reach truck and two stackers for material handling. Although the racking was G+3, they had sufficient clear height and wanted to increase storage capacity with G+5 racking.
The Godrej engineers studied the application, understood their need to increase pallet positions and provided two options: The first was to continue with reach trucks. Since the reach truck would be a heavier machine for higher height, it would entail a 200 mm increase in aisle width to 2,800 mm. This would limit the increase in pallet positions. The client also wanted to move pallets between the two warehouses, for which they proposed a powered pallet truck. The total requirement came to two reach trucks and a powered pallet truck. This would also require three operators for each shift.
The Best solution
The Godrej Articulated Forklift was a better answer to their problem and so this machine was also proposed. The aisle width actually reduced to 2,300 mm from the current 2,600 mm, while allowing the customer to go higher with G+5 racking. Since the articulated truck is almost like a conventional counterbalance forklift it also performs the function of transferring pallets between warehouses. Just one truck with one operator answered both issues of increasing storage space and material transfer.
The benefits:
