Visionaries may dream of a worldwide pallet standard that will facilitate seamless global trade. However, the reality is that we live in a world that does not fit together quite so seamlessly.
The world comes with multiple pallet sizes and styles while more often than not a facility’s material handling systems were designed to accommodate only a standard pallet configuration. As a result, receivers can be faced with the challenge of devising a pallet size “work-around” – trying to make the best of a situation involving multiple pallet formats.
Those work-arounds might include doubling up onto a rackable standard pallet, or setting the oddball pallet on the floor. For many years I worked in a produce warehouse before 48×40 standardization when we had over 30 pallet sizes. A lot of product was placed on the floor at that time. Then more recently I served a period of time at a home furnishing retailer import warehouse in California that was awash in unusual pallet sizes. (It is tricky fitting a sofa on a 48×40 unless you stand it up on end!) Luckily this facility had a lot of warehouse space for floor placement as well as stacking when product permitted.
Getran, the world’s largest independent manufacturer of automotive transmissions for cars and light commercial vehicles, used to employ a similar tactic at its Liverpool, England factory. It would floor stack incoming components that arrived on a variety of pallet sizes, including products on plastic and wooden pallets. The result of this hodgepodge was inefficient storage that created extra travel time in the plant. This practice also caused a lot of non-value-added forklift activity to ensure that FIFO (first-in–first-out) of parts was maintained. In other words, this facility was regularly moving aside all of the newer parts to get to the oldest ones in the back of the row.
Material handling equipment provider Interroll was commissioned to install a Dynamic Storage system (pallet flow racks) at the plant. The installation provided storage for 228 pallet positions in rack structure four pallets deep, three tiers high with 19 lanes.
The move was part of a lean logistics project designed to improve operations. “The new Interroll pallet flow system has been located closer to our production area and has provided compact, space saving cubic storage, enabling identical products to be grouped in the same lane and bays,” commented Neil Hodgkinson, contract manufacturing engineer at Gertag Ford Transmissions. “This in turn simplifies location and order picking of parts to support production of some 1,600 to 2,000 gearboxes daily.”
As part of the challenge, Interroll had to devise a way to handle a mix of both plastic and wooden pallets of various sizes, with different base configurations and weights. This ranged from Euro pallets 800mm x 1200mm, to UK pallets 1000mm x 1200mm and plastic pallets with bases featuring three runners through to those designed with nine raised plastic molded feet, all carrying weights from 1,300 to 2,200lbs.
To ensure trouble free operation, the highest level of safety and the longevity of the installed system, a selection of customer pallets was tested at the Interroll Centre of Excellence for Dynamic Storage in France.
The final test solution resulted in each lane being designed with 60mm diameter rollers at a 78mm pitch. Interroll’s safety separator incorporates a time plus function, which delays the back pallets rolling forward until the first pallet is removed from the front of the line. This gives the forklift driver the time to safely unload the pallet before the next one indexes forward.
The FIFO lanes were fitted with rollers 1250mm wide to accommodate any wider pallets that might appear in the future. And sure enough, within weeks of installation, 1200mm wide pallets began arriving at the facility.
Asked if the challenge of multiple sizes is something Interroll has faced with other clients, Interroll indicates that it has. The company can review a customer’s pallet pool and design a system that will support the majority of its regular pallet throughput. However, the company cautions, any non-standard pallets whether wood, plastic or metal, must be first tested in Interroll’s test facility so nothing is left to chance.
While pallets of various types can be handled, Interroll stresses that problems can occur when pallets are broken, therefore it is essential that the pallets must be of a sound structure with good runners, legs or bottom deck in order to make a positive contact with the roller surface.
At the end of the day, a modest storage system of 228 various sized pallets that significantly improves the material handling practices of one production plant can’t solve the larger issue of incompatible pallet sizes. However, it is an example of an effective work-around that facilities can take to improve their operational effectiveness. It can work in both small operations or to handle a smaller percentage of non-conforming pallets in larger pallet storage facilities.
