The Complete Handbook of Industrial Storage

Chapter 1: Understanding Industrial Storage

Industrial storage is not about buying a shelf. It is about making a decision that affects the safety of the people who work around it, the efficiency of the operation that depends on it, and the useful lifetime of the products it holds. A 2.4-meter pallet rack carrying twelve tons of steel components and a cantilever rack in a lumber yard holding untreated pine planks are both "industrial storage," but they have almost nothing in common in terms of engineering, installation, or maintenance. The first thing to understand about this category is that it is a set of engineered systems, each with a specific job to do, and each with limits that must be respected.

Think about what happens in a typical mid-sized distribution center on an ordinary Tuesday. A forklift operator puts away a pallet of canned goods onto a selective pallet rack at the third level. The pallet weighs 780 kilograms. The beams supporting it were rated for 1,200 kilograms per level, and the upright frames were designed to take the cumulative load of six such levels. The forklift driver does not think about the moment when the pallet slides into place, but at that instant the load path goes from the pallet, to the steel beams, to the upright frames, and down through the base plates into the concrete floor. If any one of those elements is undersized, damaged, or improperly anchored, the whole system is in jeopardy. A storage failure is