inbound
get the right rack for
your AS/RS
all for the family
PHOTO COURTESY OF FEDEX CORP.
When children must be hospitalized for extended periods far from
home, it can be tough for their families to find an affordable place to
stay. FedEx Corp., which has a long history of supporting children’s
charities, is helping to address that problem by funding
FedExFamilyHouse, a facility that’s slated to open next year at Le
Bonheur Children’s Medical Center in FedEx’s hometown of Memphis,
Tenn. FedEx Chairman, President, and CEO Fred Smith and his wife,
Diane, and Executive Vice President and CFO Alan Graf Jr. and his wife,
Susan, also made substantial personal contributions.
Construction began in August on the house, which will include 24
family suites, plus indoor and outdoor dining and recreational areas, a
business center, a teen lounge, kitchen and laundry facilities, and a conference room, among other amenities. FedExFamilyHouse will be LEED
certified as a sustainable building, one of the first pediatric residences to
earn that designation.
benchmarking at your convenience
Wondering whether your warehouse’s performance is up to snuff? The
Warehousing Education and Research Council (WERC) now offers a
quick, convenient method of benchmarking your operations against
those of similar companies.
The “Track Your Stats” online calculator (find it under the “Resource
Center” tab at www.werc.org) lets you compare your company’s performance statistics to the 2008 responses to WERC’s annual survey on
warehouse metrics. The tool matches your company with respondents
that are similar in size (revenue), type of operation, industry, and strategy. Track Your Stats can be used again and again as your company’s situation changes: Information is saved in a database, with entries protected by a unique identifier. You can edit your measurements and see
how the changes you make affect performance against the benchmarks
over time.
The analysis tool was developed by Karl B. Manrodt, Ph.D., associate
professor at Georgia Southern University and co-director of the
Southern Center for Logistics and Intermodal Transportation, and Kate
Vitasek, managing partner of the consulting firm Supply Chain Visions.
Jones Lang LaSalle, Ryder System, and Manhattan Associates provided
support for the project.
Automated storage and retrieval systems (AS/RS) are a marvel of engineering. They’re speedy, efficient, and often
in motion around the clock. To keep up
the pace, every part and component
must be in perfect working order—and
the pallet racks must be precisely fitted
and calibrated to the application.
But that’s not always the case, says
Skip Eastman, vice president of sales at
Steel King, a manufacturer of pallet
rack and custom storage rack solutions.
In Eastman’s view, for an AS/RS to
operate most efficiently, the pallet racks
must be built to FEM (Federation of
European Material Handling) specifications—a standard that not all pallet
racks meet.
Furthermore, the rack tolerances
must be exact for the computer-con-trolled storage and retrieval system to
work properly. “If the tolerances are significantly off, loads could be deposited
into a beam, upright, or the wrong storage location,” Eastman warns. Pallet
rack tolerances for mini-load AS/RS
(which carry lots weighing less than
1,000 pounds in totes, trays, or cartons)
can be especially demanding, since the
storage locations are smaller and the
loading device may still travel at a high
speed, he adds.
Considering that the racks must be
able to support stored pallet loads or
mini-loads at heights of 40 feet or
more, it’s no surprise that rack strength
is another concern. Add in the need for
racking to comply with fire, seismic,
and municipal building codes and you
have a complicated situation indeed.
A good source of information about
racks of all types is the Rack
Manufacturers Institute, which is part of
the Material Handling Industry of
America (MHIA). Specifications and
technical data are available on the
group’s Web site, www.mhia.org/rmi.
