Vertical storage units help make material flow

Complementing its existing racking and pallet storage systems, fluid power component stockist, Flowtech has invested in 13 Kardex Shuttle XP systems - resulting in improved picking times, release of floor space and optimisation of storage efficiency. Medium to slow moving, small to medium sized parts are stored in the Shuttle units, which store over 40,000 products in a space of just 250m2.

This compares favourably with the legacy approach, which would have needed 450m2 to store 7000 products.

The Kardex Shuttles work in families and pods, a pod being two shuttles running in tandem, with a family consisting of up to three pods.

Upon receipt of picking data from the back office system for a family, the shuttle units work in pairs so, as one part is being picked at the first Shuttle, the next part is being indexed and positioned at the other Shuttle.