These days more than ever before, businesses need to cut wasteful and profit reducing aspects of their businesses as much as possible. Forklift or industrial trucks are essential to any warehouse operation but need space to move around. This floor space is going to cost the company in terms of potential storage room lost.

However there is now an industrial truck known as the Very Narrow Aisle (VNA) forklift truck. In a low bay warehouse, the VNA truck can increase the capacity of the warehouse by up to 30%. This machine can work in a space of 1.6 metres and lift a 1500 kg load to a height of over seven metres. Since the VNA truck needs very little room in which to operate, it will be possible for the warehouse manager to stack extra pallets closer together or erect more racking systems.

Typically, the VNA truck has a chassis of just over a metre in width and a narrow front axle. This allows it to be utilised in the block stacking of pallets. It also has tough cushion tyre and front wheel drive which make it perfect for use in slippery conditions. Some of these particular industrial trucks do not require guide rails which gives them added flexibility in that they are able to take pallets from the goods received part of the warehouse and stack them away or take full pallets to the processing area of the warehouse or take them to a road vehicle ready to be despatched.

The forklift truck is, without doubt, one of the most important assets a business that needs to move heavy goods around could own.

In a large warehouse such as the supply depots belonging to supermarkets, these industrial trucks will move pallets of produce onto supply lorries quickly and efficiently. There are many different types of industrial trucks now available but for the purpose of this article let us focus on the counterbalanced forklift.

Typically, the counterbalanced forklift will have as its counterweight a block of cast iron. Depending upon the weight of this iron block, the lift will have a set weight lifting capability when its forks are lifting to their maximum height. This weight must never be exceeded because of the danger of the truck toppling over. A plate fastened to the truck will provide appropriate information.

The truck’s mast is the vertical assembly set at the front of the truck and raises or lowers the load. It is also made up of interlocking rails. These rails give it lateral stability. It is operated by one or more of the hydraulic tilt cylinders attached to the truck’s frame and mast. Alternatively the mast may be chain operated using a hydraulic motor.

The carriage, to which the forks or other accessories are attached, is mounted the mast rails and moves up and down them either by using the chains or alternatively it might be attached to the hydraulic cylinder.

The forklift is usually powered by either diesel internal combustion engine or electricity supplied by batteries or fuel cells.

Around the early 1900s, the first battery powered industrial trucks were used. An American railway company introduced the platform trucks to move luggage at one of their train stations.

During World War I, partly due to manual labouring shortages caused by the war, Britain began to develop different kinds of equipment to handle materials.  A company in the USA, in 1917, started to develop and use powered tractors and powered lift tractors in their warehouses.

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s the industrial truck or forklift truck was developed, improved and its popularity grew in industry as businesses recognised the advantages of owning equipment that would speed up the movement of heavy materials around their warehouses and premises.
World War II brought about the increased use of forklift trucks to aid the war effort.  After the Second World War, warehouses were developing ever more efficient methods of storing their goods. These developments gave rise to a need for industrial trucks that were both more maneuverable and capable of reaching greater heights.

In 1956 a Japanese company introduced its first forklift truck and made its first sale of a forklift truck in America in 1967. Since that time, many different types of trucks have been developed and built in response to industry’s rising need for their versatility and have now become an indispensible tool in the modern workplace, whether it be a mail sorting centre, a warehouse or dockyard. These modern-day work horses have been a tremendous boon to industry around the world.

To make best use of the greenhouse, you should remember that you have height to utilise, not just floor space.  A greenhouse with high eaves is a real advantage because you can attach shelving to the roof supports. Since heat rises, these shelves are especially handy for plants that will benefit from the extra warmth. There are cheap brackets that are purpose built to attach to the roof of an aluminium greenhouse.

These brackets will hold, for example, 10 inch shelves which are perfect for holding seed trays. With the installation of watering mats which will soak up a great deal of water, you can be certain your plants will not dry out. If you have tomato plants growing though, during the summer, fixed shelving will unfortunately get in the way. There is, however, a perfect solution to this problem in the shape of integral shelving that folds away for the summer.

For example, an inexpensive workstation can be easy to install and with the use of a few woodscrews could be utilised in a wooden greenhouse as well as an aluminium one.

Greenhouses, however, are mostly used for propagation and heated propagation shelves are available as well as soil warming cables, thermostats and so on. Should you not have an electricity supply to the greenhouse, there is still a way of providing extra protection and warmth for the more delicate plants with the use of a propagator inside the greenhouse. This will reduce the need to worry if there is a sudden cold snap.

Once the preliminary processes of reading the instructions, checking the components are all present and correct and you have the necessary tools to carry out the assembling of your piece of flat-pack furniture you can now progress to the next stage of the project.

One advantage of having shelving systems, storage racks, bookcases and other furniture primarily designed to store items in the loft is that they will easily fit through the entrance to the loft in their flat-pack form. Another benefit of this is that, should you wish to move house in the future and assuming glue has not been used, the furniture can be broken down again and reassembled in your new home.

If the furniture is destined for the living room, bedroom or kitchen, then it is probably best to carry out the assembling of the furniture in your workshop. This is especially important if glue is to be used and accidental staining of the carpet to be avoided.

Take care not to rush the job, careless mistakes from being in too much of a hurry can sometimes lead to damage to part of the units that will be impossible to repair. If glue and dowels are to be used be sure to wear appropriate safety gear such as a face mask. Also make sure the work area is well ventilated. Be sure to take regular breaks from the job, even if it is only for a few minutes to have a cup of coffee or stretch your legs.

Flat-pack furniture, a retailer of this particular type of furniture can store larger amounts than he could if they were fully assembled. This represents a great saving in both storage space used and the number of times the retailer will need to reorder stock and the associated cost of transporting it from the manufacturer to the salesroom.

Many of us have wandered around these superstores marvelling at the variety of designs of furniture that will enhance our living spaces and at the same time allow us to utilise all the potential of wall space in accommodations that have very little to offer in the way of floor space. Having paid for the ideal shelving systems or storage cabinets that are going to make life so much easier, the customer is then faced with the task of assembling them.

Reading the instructions thoroughly is absolutely essential if this deceptively simple project is to be successfully completed. Study the accompanying diagrams carefully as well, they can sometimes clarify an instruction that may be open to misinterpretation otherwise.

There will be a checklist of components that needs to be read and then the items on the list ticked off. The screws and fittings seem to be the most common reason for something going wrong. If there are not enough pieces of dowel or screws then the retailer should be contacted immediately.

Make sure you have the tools needed to carry out the job as well. Typically, a screwdriver, drill and hammer will be among the tools required.

Environments such as schools where many things such as pencils; books, art items, sports gear and other equipment essential to educational needs have to be stored or hospitals which must have bandages, bedding and bed pans in stock have to be able to reconfigure their shelving systems at some point.  They may need to add to the system to accommodate extra supplies or add to the existing system, reposition parts of it. Other places, such as mechanical or automotive workshops and retail establishments which need storage space also need storage shelves and systems that are hard-wearing but flexible.

Typically, a modular design would be ideal for these many and various needs.

Its design would have up to three shelf sizes which would make it perfect for the widest possible selection of accessories that would fit into what ever configuration the highly flexible system can be formed.  The accessories might include plastic boxes, box-files for document storage, drawers, hanging rails, dividers and collapsible plastic boxes for later use or used to store items temporarily needed. In a retail establishment, for example, this might include seasonal goods such as Christmas decorations or Easter eggs.

The modular nature of such a storage system would make the best possible use of the wall space available in any size of room, no matter what the width or height might be. The system might be static or indeed divided into two or three level systems. For extra flexibility the system could be placed on mobile bases.

When the personal computer first became affordable on the open market in the early 1980s, progammes were stored on tape and had to be loaded up each time the computer was switched on. Rapid advances were made and before long, document storage and file storage onto hard disks and floppy disks became the norm. A hard disk is installed into the computer’s base unit or tower. They are capable of storing massive amounts of data depending upon their size. The first floppy disks were five and a quarter inches square and were inserted into a floppy disk drive in the personal computer’s base unit.  A few years later, their size was reduced to three and a half inches.

Both sizes of disk were useful because of their portability but a limited amount of document storage was possible. The three and a half inch floppy disk, for example, only holds 1.4Mb of data.  For a while zip-drives became popular for document or file storage since they had a higher capacity than their only slightly smaller counterparts, the three and a half inch floppies. Typically they had a capacity of up to 250Mb.

Both are now being replaced by either CD or DVD, more portable and capable of storing a much increased amount of data. Nowadays people are carrying even more data around on their key-rings. The USB pen, which is effectively another hard-drive that simply plugs into the USB port on the computer tower, is a remarkable device and who knows what will be next in the area of digital technology.

In 1928, IBM introduced a file storage format that almost doubled the amount of data that could be recorded on a card. The style consisted of rectangular hole 80 columns and by the mid 1930’s IBM predicted that there would soon be no such thing as a round hole card.

Interestingly, that format was still being used in the early 1990s for two reasons.

IBM had patented the rectangular format, which meant that their competitors could not use it and were only able to use the old less efficient method of file storage. The other reason is that Remington Rand, one of IBM main competitors, changed from Hollerith’s code to a six-bit code allowing 90 columns of text to be stored on the old 45 column card.

At that time, Iowa University was punching student name on cards but other universities were developing four-digit numeric encoding of names, which was most commonly used to avoid the cost of buying expensive alphanumeric machines.

Remington Rand bought UNIVAC and integrated their new card format with UNIVAC computers. In many ways the UNIVAC card code was better than IBM’s rectangular format. UNIVAC’s system was still be used at Macy’s department stores throughout the 1960s.

However, it was not only the retail sector that continued to use this system in the 60s, the New York City tax department, Long Island Lighting and the Polaris missile control were also still using the 90 column card system. In the mid-70s a UNIVAC system was seen at a naval weapons station

Although Charles Babbage only tinkered with different design ideas for an analytical engine and never built one, he did suggest that punch cards would be used for the storage of data. This prevented an American entrepreneur, Herman Hollerith, from claiming the patent rights on using cards for file storage.

Hollerith, after perfecting his first line of electromechanical machines which included a punch, a tabulating machine to process the data punched on cards, and a sorting machine, formed a company, the Tabulating Machine Corporation. It had an uncertain start and might have collapsed if an experienced business manager by the name of Thomas Watson had not been hired.  One of Watson’s moves was to change the company’s name to International Business Machine, now better known by its acronym IBM.

The original card size used for file storage, as invented by Herman Hollerith, has remained the same, seven and three-eighths by three and a quarter inches. Before 1929 this was the standard size for most US banknotes. It is said that Hollerith chose these dimensions to be able to store the cards in boxes made for the Treasury Department.

Originally the code used for data card recording in the 1890 census had 22 columns which had eight punch positions each. As the need for more information to be stored on these cards grew, higher density formats came into being and by the end of the 1920s the standard format was 45 columns of round holes with 12 punch positions per column.  How file storage has changed!