BY DAVID MALONEY, SENIOR EDITOR
RACKS & MEZZANINES
materialhandlingupdate
A higher calling A higher calling
Need space for expansion into multichannel commerce? Just look upward.
IMAGE COURTES Y OF STEEL KING
IT’S A COMMON ENOUGH DILEMMA THESE DAYS.
Say you’re a retailer looking to add an online sales channel
to your operations. You have several options. You can
build a new facility to handle your e-commerce distribution, you can build onto an existing facility, or you can
outsource the task to a third party.
But there’s another option—one that’s often overlooked: You can look up. No, we’re not talking about seeking heavenly guidance, though that’s not a bad idea before
starting any major project. We’re talking about making use
of the facility’s vertical space.
Building up—as opposed to out—allows a company to
gain more operating space without altering a building’s
footprint, which is especially important to facilities that
are landlocked. It’s also significantly cheaper than building
out or constructing a stand-alone facility.
“It allows you to get the best utilization of square
footage and density. You don’t want to build more of a
building footprint than you need,” says Rick Herlacher,
manager of the solutions development team at Dematic, a
systems manufacturer and integrator.
