Incredibly, ordinary warehousing methods utilize only about 40% of the total available space for storage of parts or goods, the remainder is allotted for aisles. Stacking up the cartons, bags or tins of the materials in their greatest heights does not alleviate much the wastage of space. This may be acceptable when there is less materials to store, but when space is at a premium, solutions have been ordinarily found in pallet racking or building storage mezzanines. Like the concept of high-rises that occupy little ground space but a great deal of it aloft, vertical storage has been an adequate solution, at least until lately.

Mobile stowage. The two overriding difficulties of storage management have always been storage area and materials retrieval. Vertical storage utilizes the available space above ground level, commonly vacant in most conventional warehousing ways. Nonetheless, there is still the mostly unused ‘road system’ for accessing and retrieving materials, the aisles. The warehouse truck can only use its own space at any single time, so that the aisle spaces it is not using is wasted.

The mobile storage system moves the racks closer if the passageway between them is not in use so that the space is not wasted. The same racks are then moved apart when required to permit the forklift access to the materials. In this way the space between structures or shelves are used, granting as much as 100% additional storage space. The racks or shelves are moved either by persons or with mechanical assistance.

Vertical carousels. Comparable in concept to the restaurant dumbwaiter or the Rolodex, vertical carousels add storage space by eliminating the need for mechanical transporters like a forklift. Since in bins, racks or shelves easilyreadily retrievable by humans, the passageway space between the carousels may be lessened, making additional space for storage. One advantage of this system is that the materials are each time accessed at the identical height level, which can be a bonus for the accessing persons. On the other hand, vertical carousels are usually used for small-sized parts.

Mechanical self-storage. This one is run by computer and does away with the need for personal involvement, at least most of the time. While the materials are stored in uniform-sized containers and stowed in racks and pallets, loading and retrieval is performed by an automated loading-retrieval forklift-like contraption that brings the appropriate module to the person at the access window. The same machine receives the containers from the loading door for storage. So actually the machine is the warehouseman with the human as the superior.

As room gets limited for storing goods in a manufacturing or selling business, the quest for solutions continues at an ever accelerating rate. The first general solution course of vertical storage has been followed by mobile storage, both sideways and perpendicular, seemingly using up the options so that as yet no new directions are easily foreseen. But, the search has not ended and undoubtedly we will see more later on, short of shrinking the goods themselves.

A fence is akin to a picture frame: it limits but improves the value of a property. A planned garden less a fence will appear like an aberration in a lea; or, worse, a misplaced statement of a desired life. A fence can limit a vista, correct, but it can likewise create a world in its confines. Perhaps a limited world, but a private one created to your meanings and preferences.

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