Warehouse automation has grown beyond its initial role as an added benefit for improved warehouse productivity, to a near-requirement in the modern ecommerce landscape.

As warehouses devise new methods for material handling, item picking, and logistics processing, autonomous units such as robots, automated storage and retrieval systems (ASRS), and AGVs have become an integral part of many major warehouse operations in order to speed up pick times and reduce margins of error.

What a lot of warehouse managers and designers might not realize is that the design of your warehouse pallet racking can have a massive impact on how productive and well-integrated your warehouse automation can be. 

Whether your warehouse is integrating automation around your existing pallet racks, or you’re designing a new system from the ground up with a new racking layout to match, understanding the racking design needs of warehouse automation can be crucial.

How Pallet Racks Can Help In An Automated Warehouse

Controlled Environments for Storage

Arguably the most important benefit a pallet rack can offer to warehouse automation is the creation of a controlled storage environment. By providing a trackable, consistent, and uniquely-identified location for each product (typically through the use of SKUs and consistent warehouse labeling), you can better design your automation around the location of the items they will need to retrieve, and work to reduce the risk of mispicks or lost inventory.

Improved Warehouse Density

With the right pallet rack decking, you can easily and quickly improve the number of items stored on each pallet rack. This can allow you to increase the number of items that your automation has access to, allowing them to be picked and retrieved more efficiently than the items that still need to be grabbed manually.

Improved Aisle Space

While proper aisle width is always crucial for safety concerns, designing your pallet rack with larger aisle width can both improve automation travel and give a safer path for your workers to travel through.

By making sure your pallet rack beams are correctly positioned to both support your racks and give enough space between the neighboring racks, you can make the path for your autonomous vehicles & robotics easier than it might be otherwise.

Item Density Through Improved Tolerances

The right pallet rack, with the correct adjustments and parts, can help store an even larger amount of items as long as the tolerances are adjusted correctly. Through careful maintenance of your pallet racks, you can help make sure your items are safely stored in a way that your automation can easily access, while helping to ensure the maximum density of goods.