TGW-ERMANCO is based in Spring Lake, Mich., a North American division of TGW Logistics Group that specializes in helping companies plan, design, implement and service logistics solutions. We recently spoke with John Clark, director of marketing for the division, and thought you would be interested in what he had to say.
Mary Glindinning: Do you think forklifts will become extinct in material handling? When?
John Clark: Forklifts aren’t going away as there still is a need for them in many facets of material handling. That said, there is a visible trend in U.S. material handling that is moving from the traditional ‘low and wide’ approach of warehousing to a ‘high and narrow’ approach of dense, high bay storage.
As companies look to get the most out of an existing asset of a distribution center and improve their ability to deliver the perfect order, their existing facility may be landlocked and unable to serve their needs. One way to squeeze as much cost out of a facility as possible is to consider high bay, dense storage via automated storage and retrieval systems (AS/RS). These systems almost entirely remove the need for forklifts.
Is the trend of bringing items for shipping to the person, instead of the picker going to get the item, part of the evolution?
The trend of bringing the work to the worker is gaining more popularity than ever before.
One of the great by-products of high bay, dense storage via automated storage and retrieval systems (AS/RS) is that the work comes to the worker. This ‘goods to person’ approach is much more worker friendly as, by it’s name, the work comes to them. It’s a much more ergonomic approach, and it increases order accuracy as well because the correct items come to the worker for picking, so there is no confusion about which item to pick.
Is narrow and high storage also part of the evolution of the industry?
When you begin to calculate the total costs involved in distribution, from labor, facility costs and inventory accuracy, going narrow and high makes good business sense. You can get more volume from an existing facility, using fewer workers, but with increased accuracy. With automated storage, you don’t have to heat or light the areas where automated storage is, further reducing costs. A traditional warehouse using rack storage accessible by forklifts often has a large portion of the facility (the space above the racking up to the ceiling) unused. Traditional warehouses think space in terms of square feet of storage space. With an AS/RS, you begin to see things in terms of cubic feet of storage space, because almost the entire cubic area of a facility can store product.
How did these ideas come about?
Automated storage got a foothold in Europe, where land and labor were very expensive. As costs of labor and land increased in the U.S., and companies had ‘landlocked’ facilities in favorable locations near transportation hubs that were unable to expand in the ‘traditional’ approach, automated storage has become more popular. In the U.S., some of the first facilities to utilize AS/RS were cold or frozen storage facilities. Those facilities already built higher to reduce the ‘heat sink’ of a facility (hot air rises, so the smaller the roof space of a facility, the less the heat can get in). An AS/RS doesn’t need to take breaks either, and in cold storage facilities, workers were required to spend certain amounts of time NOT in the cold areas. If a worker could only spend 40 minutes of each hour in the cold storage area, switching to an AS/RS, where the workers don’t go in the cold storage area, but the work comes to them in an ambient heat area means they can work for the entire hour, giving an immediate increase in worker productivity.
