Those familiar with warehouse operations understand the importance of selecting the right bins. Far more than mere storage solutions, flexible containers can go a long way toward building more flexible, agile storage and logistics systems that can easily adjust to changing needs or evolving products.
Much like optimizing your physical layouts and planning your inventory, selecting the correct warehouse bins plays a huge role in how efficient an operation ends up being. Once you find the right solution and products, reusable bins can offer significant advantages at almost every stage of the logistics process.
What are the Advantages of Corrugated Plastic Warehouse Bins?
Corrugated, reusable plastic containers can benefit a variety of different industries and business sectors. In warehousing specifically, corrugated plastic bins have five core advantages over the alternatives.
1. Potential Cost Savings
Being able to reuse your custom containers, even if product and storage needs change over time, can be a significant cost savings. Instead of continually reordering new bins, you can rest assured that your investment will continue to serve your needs over time. That’s especially true for corrugated plastic when compared to cardboard. Cardboard bins may cost less up-front but will drastically increase your future costs as they’ll require constant reordering.
2. Increased Longevity, Durability and Impact Resistance
Reusable plastic containers last much longer than alternatives like cardboard or single-use plastics. They can also better sustain the heavy use and traffic in a typical warehousing operation, including the ability to survive restocking and local transportation.
3. Core Moisture Resistance Benefits
Corrugated plastic is naturally moisture resistant, which can be helpful in two ways. This property protects the container and its content from external moisture or water damage while also protecting it from other products that may ‘sweat,’ allowing you to keep your mixed warehouse inventory in good shape over time.
4. Stackability and Low Weight
Maximizing storage space in your warehouse has to be a continual priority. Corrugated plastic bins can help, thanks to their design. Efficient designs combined with the low weight of the containers can result in space optimization, both during transportation to the warehouse and while stored.
5. Customization Opportunities
Work with the right partner, and your corrugated warehouse bins can become as custom as you need them to be. Build and order containers to fit your needs and space while leveraging their multi-use capabilities to maintain storage flexibility.
How to Implement Warehouse Bins in Your Operations
Transitioning a manual warehouse to an Automated Storage and Retrieval System (AS/RS) is a complex process that involves careful planning, coordination, and implementation. Here are the steps required for a successful transition:
1. Identify Container Requirements
What storage capacity are you looking for? How will your new containers integrate with existing systems, and what retrieval speed do the containers need to accommodate?
2. Budgeting and Cost Analysis
Your new container systems have to fit into a comprehensive budget that includes any cost of AS/RS equipment, installation, training, and required infrastructure changes.
3. Determine the Function of Your AS/RS System
Your AS/RS functionality needs to fit within your warehouse requirements, including unit load, mini-load, or carousel systems. It must also work with your throughput requirements and expectations for scalability, flexibility, and compatibility with existing systems.
4. Make the Necessary Infrastructure Modifications
For your AS/RS system to work, first consider racking installation and any conveyor systems you might need to put in place. Flexcon can help you navigate this process, acting as a trusted advisor and partner to help your team implement these changes successfully.
5. Find the Right Flexcon Containers for a Warehouse Scale Up
Finally, it’s time to find the right containers to scale up your warehouse. Options from Flexcon include:
- Warehouse Bins
- Pallets
- Attached Lid Containers
- Stackable and Nestable Containers
- Custom Plastic Bins and Trays
- Shelving and Racking Options
Why Work With Flexcon?
At Flexcon, we understand that any warehouse operation can involve many complex processes. For example, you may need to fit out automated operations that move goods on conveyors and store them on multi-tiered rack systems. Or you may have a thriving warehouse operation that only uses warehouse pallets stacked on the floor. Either way, you’ll want a storage solution that maintains peak performance levels in your workflow.
Every business is unique, just like every logistics operation is unique. At Flexcon, we help our partners find the right solution for their specific challenge at a fair price.
That means developing long-term relationships with clients rather than just selling bins. It means building true partnerships so our clients can delegate their warehousing responsibilities to us. It’s also why we stay with our clients in the long run. The mutual benefit grows over time.
