Hardware specialist VBH has invested £250,000 to increase the storage capacity at its main warehouse in Gillingham with the addition of 4 vertical lift machines.

The lifts were delivered and installed during April, with the first machine now fully loaded with over 1000 different items. The remaining lifts will be fully loaded by the end of June.

Each lift is over 7 metres high and carries 12 tonnes of stock distributed over 70 steel product trays. They operate a ‘dual tray’ system, which means that a second tray is always ready to work from as soon as the current tray is finished with. This means that both the putting away and picking processes are very fast with no waiting time for the operator.

As well as the benefit of additional storage space, the speed of the picking process is dramatically increased as the average time taken to deliver the product to the picking station is just 30 seconds. When the product tray is presented to the picker the ‘light to pick’ system ensures accuracy of item selection where more than one product is stored on the tray.

Each lift stores the equivalent of 150 pallet spaces in only a 14m² footprint, so this has led to a re-organisation of the Gillingham warehouse with the addition of more standard bulk pallet racking.

The new system is already yielding positive results in terms of efficiency and space saving. Logistics Director Mark Skudder comments ‘The installation of the lifts and the training of our staff went extremely smoothly. The warehouse re-organisation means that, not only can we stock more product in Gillingham, but we can do it in a smart way. This helps us achieve our goal of providing a continued improvement to our delivery service. April saw us deliver 98.2% of catalogue items in full and on time, and we’re constantly looking to improve.’