If you have a large number of small to medium size products, parts, tooling or other inventory that take up far too much floor space, you may want to consider a vertical storage solution. These tower-like systems enable you to store inventory in a much smaller area yet make retrieval quick and easy.

Gosiger uses 5 of these Parts Towers (see picture) to store its $10,000,000 inventory of CNC machine tool parts. Here’s how it works:

1. The Parts Tower sits in a 10’ x 10’ area (100 square feet) yet provides nearly 6,000 square feet of storage. Conventional shelving would provide only 300 square feet of storage in the same area.
2. There are 42 storage bins in the tower. Each bin measures 100” long x 33” deep x 6” high. These bins are partitioned to allow for more than one item to be stored in each bin.
3. By assigning a unique number to each item stored, users can easily locate and retrieve the desired object. In Gosiger’s case, each part is assigned a three-character code such as B-16-5. The first character (B) refers to the assigned Tower. The second (16) refers to the bin number, and the third character (5) refers to the partition within the bin.
4. A control on the tower activates a motor that moves the bins into reach when the user wishes to retrieve a part. Because Gosiger connected its parts ordering system to the Parts Tower control, the appropriate bin automatically moves into position when an order is placed.
5. In addition to making much better use of floor space, these Parts Towers reduce the time it takes to find a part and process an order, thus reducing labor costs.

A vertical storage solution isn’t the right solution for every situation, but if the items you store lend themselves to such a system you can save valuable floor space, time and money.