Quick turnaround key
March 1st 2010 Speed of aisleway movement proves
as important as working in narrow
aisles for 3PL Bowker as it identifies
quick turnaround as a warehouse
priorty.
Leading 3PL Bowker Group has
introduced a fleet of 12 Flexi
articulated forklift trucks from
Narrow Aisle. Five Flexis are in
service at both the Leyland and
Preston facilities, with a further two
trucks working at the Hull site.
Throughout the business Bowker
has standardised on narrow aisle
widths with some block stacking
capacity at each of its facilities.
Although the Flexis can operate in
aisles as narrow 1.8m wide, Bowker
chose to set the aisle widths at 2m
because it was felt that the extra space
would allow the most efficient speed
of throughput.
"A significant part of our business
is about achieving a quick
turnaround," explains warehouse
manager, Stuart Greenwood. "Quite
simply, we felt that by narrowing the
aisleways too much we would restrict
the speed at which the forklifts can
travel between picking locations."
While articulated forklift suppliers
have stressed the benefits of keeping
aisle widths to a minimum for many
years John Maguire, sales and
marketing director at Narrow Aisle,
believes that some companies are in
danger of adversely affecting the
efficiency and productivity of their
forklift fleet by attempting to squeeze
too many racking runs into any given
storage cube.
"At fast-moving operations like
Bowker where speed of pallet putaway
and pick is essential, the speed at
which a truck can safely operate in
the aisleways is more important than
the need to narrow the aisleways," he
says.
"I think that this is sometimes
forgotten at the warehouse planning
stage. For example, I recently visited a
site where the wide chassis articulated
trucks specified in the operation have
no choice but to travel at less than
half of their top speed within the
aisles because clearance each side was
too small so there is very little margin
for error on either side of the truck.
This is clearly counter productive to
any benefits the user may have
derived by being able to add extra
pallet positions by cutting the aisle
dimensions."
Bowker's Flexi fleet comprises G4
models from the Narrow Aisle range.
An electric-powered truck, the Flexi
G4 is powered by a heavy duty
battery for long shift working. More articles from Narrow Aisle Flexi: | 
