“You could buy a standard rack with pallets, but it would quickly fill up”, Te Poele continues. “And what do you do then? You just put a pallet next to it. It all becomes an enormous mess, as it’s always the bottom sheet that you need. With our storage system we can see exactly what is in which drawer and how much we have left. And you don’t have to go round clearing up pallets.”
“Compared with pallets, we can store a lot more material in our system. We work with all kinds of materials, with various thicknesses. That’s why we wanted to fit as many drawers as possible into the available space. In the end we bought a variant with 38 drawers, which are incorporated into a structure less than 6 metres in height. This was possible thanks to the shallowness of the drawers. But you can still store 2.5 tonnes of material in a single drawer.”
time savings and safety
Where do the main benefits lie for Wolter Tijdink? “In particular, it saves you time. You can place the right sheet onto the machine with just a press of a button. Another important benefit is that you can reduce the number of forklift movements. Safety matters too, after all. And you no longer have to go round clearing up pallets.”
“You not only work more efficiently, as there are fewer operations involved, but the work is also more pleasant”, Te Poele concludes. “A tidy hall is enjoyable to work in. A number of fellow metalwork companies have visited us to come and see the laser cutter. What always strikes them is how tidy everything is. And that’s largely down to the sheet metal storage rack.”