There is Value in Headroom

The next time you are in your warehouse or factory remember to look up! I can guarantee that the space around you is less than 40% full.  If it is not, then you are one of the very small minority of people who have achieved an 85% efficiency or one of the 35% of people operating in cramped conditions and under performing. Either way it is very likely that there are opportunities for improvements.

Essential Heights

For now lets assume there is nothing going on in your roof space other than its capacity to inflate your fuel bills.  If you think of train sets or railway lines, its a method of linking up to points which otherwise don’t exist in a desirable form or are too costly to interact with each other.  In order to access headroom you need 3 conditions:

•    Condition 1 – Anything over doorway height has the capability of earning you an income provided you can think of something to do with it.

•    Condition 2 – Anything over 4500mm high has the potential to become another work floor or storage platform provided you have the means of access and support.

•    Condition 3 – If you want full mezzanine space then 5m is the minimum otherwise you will hit your head on the roof.

Who Needs It?

If you take things to pieces or put them back together, sort them out, consign as in holding bulk and sending out small to multiple destinations and you want to cut costs, save time, space, handling damage or just mix ups or mistakes then you are one of the 10 best applications for conveyors.

What you can Save?

For my real example I am going to explain how the use of overhead conveyors saved two companies over £400 per hour straight on to their bottom line.

Both companies warehouse, manufacture, and ship and are multi sited. They both supply retail who are not noted for their generosity and they have to work very hard for their pennies.  Manufacturing headroom is usually governed by the height of the machines, which in textiles is low.  Storage is more complex but a 7m eave is a good starting point.
The U.K., which moved from shop keeping in Napoleonic times to become the production centre of the planet, is still littered with redundant production facilities.  Even engineering work shops are seldom over 4m and frequently too narrow because they housed cranes. Modern facilities draw a good but not perfect compromise.

Company A had two sites 60 miles apart.  One was a cut, make and trim textile operation and the other onward processed their work.  The second factory, sited in an old mill, in Yorkshire had inaccessible roof space filled with steel roof trusses.  Not obvious, but possible, these roof trusses could be opened out, supported through a mezzanine floor, strengthened and fitted out to hold the cut, make and trim operation.  It paid for itself in 6 weeks.  A simple gravity conveyor connected the two operations.

Company B had a manufacturing unit in a 9m high building and a storage unit in a 2.8m high building.  This arrangement was reversed to provide mezzanine storage and adjustable pallet racking storage.  It became a marshalling point and distribution operation for the business.  It took six months to complete and enabled production volumes to double with the same work force.    This was achieved by an inter-connecting conveyor ferrying goods at ground level from four manufacturing sections at the end of which they were metal detected and fed straight on to an overhead conveyor and out to a 7 vehicle bay dock where they were fed on to waiting loading conveyors, effectively turning a 6 man operation into a two man operation at every connecting point to the conveyor so the vehicles spent less time on the docks, more work could be warehoused or processed and less errors were made in processing.