Can Bulk Storage Save Few Bucks?

If you are a warehouse solution designing professional, I’m sure at some point you must have encountered this question, Should I store everything in bulk or in racks? This is not a complex problem to solve and many of you already may have answer for this. So why I’m writing about this? I’m writing this to create a visual document for quick reference and decision making in going bulk vs. rack storage.

The comparison and evaluation is in pure storage and space utilization point of view. Order profiles and costing part is not considered for sake of simplicity.

The space utilization comparison between bulk and rack storage is made in two scenarios.

1. Comparing bulk storage with single deep pallet rack

2. Comparing it with double deep pallet racks.

With practical considerations bulk storage is limited to 6high and baseline rack storage is also considered as 6high. Usually, space utilization is seen in terms of square feet per pallet stored. Here let’s see at an overall basis in terms of percentage space utilization if pallets were to be stored in the bulk in different configuration instead of racks.

The above table and charts also shows us going deeper doesn’t essentially increase the space utilization as much as compared to going higher.

My findings:

When comparing to single deep racks, I believe the sweet spot is 3Deep-6High and 6Deep-5High. These two configurations will give you optimum space utilization in both low and high clear height buildings depending on what is available with you. This may help to save investment in pallet racks.

And now when comparing to double deep racks, unless you can go 6High and more than 5Deep the space utilization is not great and you may consider double deep racks and save some cost on building square feet.