Mobile pallet racks are essentially single-deep pallet racks on wheels or tracks permitting an entire row of racks to move away from adjacent rack rows. The underlying principal is that aisles are only justified when they are being used; the rest of the time they are occupying valuable space. Access to a particular storage row is achieved by moving (mechanically or manually) the adjacent row and creating an aisle in front of the desired row. As a result, less than 10 percent of the floorspace is devoted to aisles, and storage density is the highest of any of the pallet storage alternatives. Unfortunately, the pallet storage retrieval productivity is the lowest of any of the alternatives. Hence, mobile racks are justifiable when space is scarce and expensive, and for slow-moving SKUs with one to three pallets on-hand. The cost of typical mobile rack is in the range of $250 per pallet podition.
A mobile storage solution has many advantages over fixed shelving in terms of space utilisation. Only 1 access aisle is needed. The mobile units can be moved singularly or together, generating an aisle as and where it is required, creating almost double the storage capacity.
