Tool stores are often located at manufacturing plants and minesites and support the maintenance, workshop and production teams with required tools and parts to ensure they have a constant supply and so that the business can track all issue in and issue out of tools, parts and PPE. Engineering stores operate in a very similar way but are generally found in food manufacturing plants or others in the industry who adopt similar principles. In short they are there to ensure continuity of supply to the whole business unit, often from only a very small footprint.
Given the small footprint these stores operate from they often need to be innovative in the equipment they choose to use and are limited on the stock on hand they are allowed to keep and often times their growth does not align with the growth of the business. Some of the ways that these areas chose to better utilise their footprint is by utilising high density industrial storage solutions such as heavy duty drawer cabinets, vertical drawer racks, parts racks, hose storage racks and other systems which help reduce footprint.
Not all items however lend themselves to high density storage systems so other systems are also used in tool stores including aerosol storage cabinets, flammable liquids cabinets, Longspan shelving, v belt racks. Sometimes in the case for example of v belt racks of hose racks these stores will need to take up more room to ensure they don’t get damaged. If the store is short of space they may apply for more room but generally they will often result in using modified shipping containers outdoors for some stock lines to ensure they can still sufficiently support the operation although this does generally lead to inefficiencies.
The team at Containit looks forward to discussing the storage equipment that is required for your facility.
