If you're planning to add a cool room to your distribution warehouse, there are a number of issues you may want to consider before you choose the final position of the room. While honing in on the right spot, you may want to consider the following issues.
Proximity to the Delivery Door
When you have items delivered to your warehouse that need to go in the cool room, you don't want those items to sit there for hours. In most cases, there's a very limited amount of time you can leave frozen or cold foods out before you start breaking food safety rules. If you locate the cool room far from your delivery door, that may delay the amount of time it takes to move the food to the cool room. Because of that, you may want to locate the cool room near your main delivery door or create a workflow that ensures the goods move quickly from delivery to the cool room.
Impact on Current Traffic Flow
The way people and machinery move through your warehouse has a big impact on efficiency. If you are happy with your existing workflow, take care that the new cool room doesn't disrupt your flow. If you don't have walking or forklift paths outlined on the floor, take a day or at least a few hours to observe traffic flow patterns. If they are working, note where they are, and consider using tape to outline the paths. Then, put your cool room somewhere that works with these workflows, but keep in mind you will have new streams of traffic from your delivery door to the cool room.
Efficiency
Cool rooms are more efficient if you locate them near other cool rooms. If you have areas that are heated, such as warm areas for tropical plants, you want to keep your cool room away from those areas. Your cool room installer can give you other positioning tips in regard to efficiency.
Accessibility for Service
When choosing a spot for your cool room, also remember that service professionals may need to occasionally access some of the refrigeration components of the room. To that end, you may need to set panel-based cool rooms slightly away from walls to create access behind them.
Convenience of Controls
Finally, talk with the cool room installer about controls. For convenience, you may want the ability to control your cool room remotely. If the cool room's controls can be connected to an app, that's ideal, so you can handle things on a phone or tablet. If the remote controls need to be wired to the main controls, you may need to put the cool room in certain proximity to your office so you can check on and adjust temps from your desk.
For more information, contact a cool room builder like Retracom.
Share30 March 2017
Welcome to my piece of the internet. My name is John, and I imagine you found this blog while looking for information about industrial or manufacturing concepts. I recently decided to start this blog because I needed somewhere that I could share my research. I recently moved to a small town, and I'm trying to attract factory owners to set up shop there. As a result, I have done an immense amount of research into these fields. I figure the more I know the easier it will be to pitch our town to business owners. Anyway, this blog is a separate project to that. It's just a space where I want to share tips and ideas related to manufacturing. I love writing, and I hope that you enjoy reading my posts. More importantly, I hope they help you make your business more productive. Thanks for reading!