Very little can match the disgust one faces when they realize everything they have purchased in a warehouse or production plant is obsolete and needs to be replaced. It happens more than you think. The person in charge tried to save a few bucks and never planned for the next phase. A few months or years go by and it’s time to expand and you get hit square in the face with the reality that you need to start over and kiss all prior investments goodbye.

There is a very easy and economical way to plan for company growth and future expansion. Talk to an expert at Abel Womack. With our help and expertise, we can assist with storage systems and racking, Raymond forklifts, robotics, autonomous vehicles, carousels, vertical lift modules (VLMs),and conveyors that will allow expansion as you grow instead of limiting what you can do. Buying or leasing equipment should allow for opportunities, not be a dead end.

Plan to fail if you fail to plan

Back to the title of this little blog……when you start up, a new or used forklift is usually on top of the priority list. A forklift is your material handling system, and it usually works just fine until you start hitting your stride. Then as you realize you are out of floor space, you start looking to put pallet racking in the building. This is the first but not the last trap you will face. The layout of the racking and the planning for future use of all your building’s vertical space down the road will save you tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in the long run. Ask tough questions of your account manager and look for options. Think about stage 2, 3, 4…etc. They should all slide into play if you plan.

Consider all your options

Automation is changing things daily in our industry and Abel Womack is on the cutting edge of it. Robots and cobots (collaborative robots) can do more tasks for less money and they show up every shift. With the labor shortage facing us all, having a robot take care of repetitive tasks frees up personnel for other places in the operation. Let a robot with an ROI of less than two years take over palletizing, machine loading and other tasks that prove difficult roles to fill with people.

There are traps here as well…. watch out for buying the less expensive robot with limited speeds if you hope to increase your production down the road. Look into lease options as you will pay less per month and have the option of upgrading every five years or so. The tax implications need to be considered but you will never have a building of obsolete equipment if it is on a 60-month replacement cycle and there are new inventions every day.

Creating an efficient machine

Production space on your floor makes you money…. storage is an ugly expense. Utilize the Kardex Remstar lineup to turn a parts room into a production floor by compacting inventory and going higher. The VLM and carousel products put huge amounts of products in a small space. They utilize every vertical inch, secure your inventory, and bring everything to your employees instead of having them wander the racks looking for items. One person can pick an order or restock the machine and never leave their station. These machines are made to sync with your inventory systems or to work on their own. Combined with other pieces they can be a huge part of an efficient material handling system.

Don’t make an expensive mistake, call Abel Womack, and see what options are out there. Our consultations are FREE, and we really do enjoy seeing manufacturing and warehousing operations.  We are kind of nerds like that.