A large-scale municipal vehicle repair operation has
eased its tire and component stocking challenges by
utilizing a new flexible type of storage system that
starts from raw shelving and evolves as business,
budget or storage needs shift.
“Manufacturers make a lot of changes to part design
and shape from year-to-year,” notes Bruce Donatelli,
fleet management supervisor for the City of
Philadelphia. “To improve productivity, we sought to
consolidate most of our parts and tire storage from
bulky, traditional shelves on our third floor down
to more flexible, space-efficient shelves in our
first floor service bays, where the work actually
gets done.”
Donatelli turned to a flexible modular storage
system called V-Grip from Equipto, a Tatamy, Pa.-
based supplier of industrial storage units.
“The option to add or adjust shelves, drawers or
other accessories as-needed should help us maximize
storage density where its needed most – next to the
service bays – even if part sizes or configurations
change,” says Donatelli.
“With the V-Grip storage system, we at least doubled
our storage in a limited space,” he reports. “We
added vertical storage with a deckover mezzanine
above our shelves with stair access. This gave us
the room we needed for bulky items.”
While traditional modular drawer cabinets on casters
are fine for mechanics to roll around the shop,
their main drawback for tire and parts storage is
that they are essentially unchangeable steel boxes,
unable to efficiently accommodate changing sizes,
shapes, weights, quantities or configurations,
according to Equipto’s Del Williams.
“Once the size of the drawers and box frame is set,
modular drawer cabinets have virtually no future
adaptability, as different size drawers are not
typically swapped out to better meet changing part
size or shape. As storage needs change, for
instance, storing small-sized parts in 6-inch
drawers could waste a large amount of storage
space,” says Williams.
“Though traditional storage shelves offer more space
than modular drawer cabinets, a tremendous amount of
storage space can also be wasted if, for instance,
3-inch-high parts are stored on 24-inch-high
shelves. Because moving a shelf to create denser
storage space can often require removing and
reassembling 10 or more nuts and bolts, this is
practically never done on a large scale, Williams
points out.
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“When parts and tire storage capacity lags behind
the need, clutter results with parts too often
stored on the floor, on top of cabinets and stacked
in boxes – which can lower productivity if parts are
not quick and easy to store and retrieve,” says
Williams.
“What makes the V-Grip storage system unique is that
it starts as raw shelving and allows parts and tire
managers to adapt and create denser and denser
storage capacity as business, budget, or storage
needs change,” Williams explains. “The modular
storage system is more flexible than modular drawer
cabinets or traditional shelves because it is
designed so shelves, drawers, and other accessories
can be interchanged in the shelf cavity. Since each
shelf, drawer or accessory is individually mounted
to upright posts using a proprietary bracket system,
they are individually adjustable and can be added at
any time without disassembly of the unit.”
For more information, visit www.equipto.com.
