Superimposed Pallets

Dear Saferpakers,

unsure where to post this question, I finally decided to post it in HACCP section

I'm currently facing a challenging task.

We stack pallets of end product in the warehouse and we recently outsourced the warehouse management to a third party company.

They are asking us to determine the maximum heighth of stacked pallets, I mean how many pallets may be safely and securely stacked for every item geometry.

I know this is not quality issue, IMHO it's an engineering problem, nevertheless I have been given the task to solve the problem as usual

It' s also question of money because the higher you stack the lower you pay.

I did many web searches but found no results yet I don't think I'm the first one looking for solution to the problem

Can anyone out there help me before I give up and hear from consultants ?

TIA. Regards. Franco

Not sure myself, but depends upon the total weight resting on the bottom pallet!! (an assumption)

Therefore the strength of the packaging will be the control.

Just my quick thoughts.

We had this problem with stillages of jackboxes for landrover.

When we supplied them the jackbox was empty and could be stacked 5 high. However when our customer had put the jacks and assorted bits into the boxes the total weight soared. we had to place large labels on the pallets stating 2 high max, to prevent OUR customer overstacking !!!

Hi Franco,

Its all about the overall weight tolerance. I may have some thing for you.

Regards
Charles Chew

Hi Franco,

The file I wanted to attach here is probably too big. I have emailed it to Simon who will re-post it.

Hope you will find it useful.

Charles Chew

The file is 2.5mb pdf so rather than attach it to the post I have uploaded to cyberspace and provided a link. It will take a few minutes to download (depending on your connection).

By the way that's really great Charles - thank you very much!

Warehouse Distribution Science

Regards,
Simon

Hi Franco,

The file I wanted to attach here is probably too big. I have emailed it to Simon who will re-post it.

Hope you will find it useful.

Charles Chew

Hi Charles,

thanks a lot. Franco B)

Hi Franco,

Assuming the stacked product is in corrugated - I can calculate all the load bearing properties & let you know how & what can be stacked safely.

Please note that this information will only give you loading / force requirement and not the stability of the load.

I will need a fair amount of information to do this including:

Pallet configuration:
-no of layers
-no on a layer
-pallet size
-pallet type
-no of pallets high (or in racking)
-Column or interlock stacked
Product:
-weight of product
-amount of support product gives (can assume no support if not available)
-Packaging type
-Internal Dimensions
Storage:
-No days, humidity & temperature at each location (final stacked product)
-Transportation between locations

If this is not what you require, please ignore all the blurb..

Kind regards

Richard

Please note that this information will only give you loading / force requirement and not the stability of the load.
If this is not what you require, please ignore all the blurb..

Thank you Richard, it's so kind of you

Our bottles are packaged into corrugated cartons and our corrugated carton supplier was able to do the calculation, but I'm afraid the safe stacking height is not only related to carton quality

Item geometry, the position of the bottles inside the carton and overall palletization scheme play a key role and we should cover the basement and pallet defects too so the model should be more complicated

Thank you very much again. Franco