In the summer of 2014, a visiting customer raised a concern that there wasn’t enough space in our warehouse to store his parts. No one had given much thought to a redesign of parts storage prior to this question. Things seemed to be fine the way they were but could there be a better system for storing and handling incoming orders?
With a goal of optimizing the IHT Corporation warehouse and producing an extra 400 square feet of floor space, it was obvious that it was time to do some house cleaning. We were able to clear 360 square feet by evaluating everything stored on shelves for its true value, and to either recycle, scrap or discard everything that was deemed expendable. Shelving was moved to make way for rows of open floor storage with numbered rows for easy identification of order location. The resulting space measures 960 square feet. Shelves that had been emptied of unneeded material and removed have opened up more available floor space for orders to be stored. Our tooling area was also enhanced by 300 square feet. The overall result is an optimized space in which work flows directly from the row to the induction heater, since both ends of the row are now open.
