If you or someone in your household is currently involved in studying, you might want to consider investing in storage solutions like shelves to help.

Whether you are in the process of completing a course, or your children are going through their learning activities at school, such items can be of great assistance.

While there is no substitute for hard work and diligence when it comes to getting good marks, having shelves can also play a role.

After all, there is nothing worse than getting near to exams or trying to write an essay when you realise that the notes you need have gone missing.

Sometimes, these resources can be virtually irreplaceable and at the very least it will take you time and possibly cost you money to get new ones.

In contrast, by being organised and regularly filing work away, it is possible to ensure this kind of situation never arises.

And by having resources displayed in an easily accessible way, it is easier to gain an impression about how much work needs to be done to complete the course.

Meanwhile, if you are the parent of a schoolchild, it can reduce the amount of time you spend looking behind sofas, in bins and under cushions for your youngsters’ exercise books.

If you ensure they make use of storage in a methodical and regular way and discourage them from simply throwing books erratically around the house, you will be able to reduce the chances of them going missing, which is great news for everyone.

A stock controller’s worst nightmare is a disorganised stock-room. An efficient stock clerk will carry out a stock check at least once a week. A newly employed stock controller should always carry out a full stock check on his first day. The last thing he needs is old, out of date items that have been pushed to the back whenever a new delivery has arrived and been stored away. Plastic storage boxes might be the solution, but not easy to check everything that is in them.

Free-standing shelving systems would seem to be the perfect answer. With castors to make them easy to move around, the stock controller will be able to see what is in stock and how much or how many.

Ideally, this shelving system will be quick and easy to construct with the option of having all of its shelves adjustable. Depending on the type of products needing to be stored, this type of system may have a load bearing capacity of up to 500kg. The buyer is advised to check with the retailer’s sales office regarding this matter, the system does need to comply with Health and Safety regulations

The supplier of the shelving systems should also offer to retail accessories to their systems such as; shelf dividers, modular boxes and bins for small parts. A typical feature of this type of shelving system is the lightweight but sturdy shelf. The reason this kind of shelf is so light but strong is that it is made from cold rolled and formed steel.

Whether you are a commercial artist or hobbyist, craft paper storage is going to be of great importance to you. Paper must be stored in a clean, dry environment, away from sunlight which causes yellowing and there are many ways of achieving this protection.

For example, a craft desk is available that will suit all your needs. The contents of its top drawers will be visible through its glass work surface. This particular feature will allow you to find your craft tools easily at a glance and the materials you will be using to make your hand-crafted items. The other benefit of this surface is that you could also use it to display your finished pieces of art-work without the inherent risk of their being damaged through repeated handling. There is an acid that exudes from everyone’s fingers which is extremely harmful to paper, which is why you are asked in some libraries to wear cotton gloves when handling antique books.

The self assembly craft desk will come with large and small totes. A tote is a bag with drop down plastic compartments to hold several pieces of work or sheets of paper and fold up to form a nylon holder for ease of carriage.

Another method of paper storage is the shelving unit. This unit will, typically, be made up of wide, shallow drawers, capable of holding paper sizes A0 and smaller. The units may be available as complete systems or ones that are able to be added on to at a later date.

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!

When you think about storage, people tend to think about pallets and huge heavy items yet it is not just these larger items that need storing – in every warehouse and business there are smaller items to be kept as well and putting them on a pallet can result in lost or damaged stock as it just is not ideal.

Small parts storage is a range of really adaptable products especially designed to bring some order to the chaos that comes from storing small parts.  These can include storage items such as containers, feeder trolleys, plastic drawers and more.  Each and any of these items can be used on their own of alternatively they can be combined together to make a full storage system.  For the industrial workplace these items could include screws, nuts and bolts, or for the retail industry it could be tags, hooks and pricing items.

A great benefit of using this sort of storage system is that it makes organising these items simple enough that stock rotation or stock checking becomes a much easier task – as opposed to looking at a pile of small parts and taking a wild guess.

Using louvred panels is particularly attractive for many warehouses because these mean that containers can be hung on them – making use of valuable space that could otherwise be wasted.  Alternatively plastic drawer units can be stored in the storeroom of factory workshop.

By exploring all the storage options open to you, you can make the most of your storage space and save time and money – just what every business needs in the recession.

One of the most useful tools in warehouses and areas where heavy items need to be moved are powered industrial trucks. They are vehicles that can be driven by a trained driver to move heavy items around a warehouse. Powered industrial trucks can be used to push and pull items, carry items and lift and stack items.

There are a dozen different types of trucks that are used to move items around, and some of them can be used in hazardous environments, such as around flammable materials.

The use of powered industrial trucks is very important around heavy items, where merchandise and materials can be too heavy for people to lift by themselves, without the aid of machinery.

You should be cautious around powered industrial trucks however, as they can cause accidents if the correct training has not first been taken. Operating powered industrial trucks requires training and certification in their safe use. This has to be renewed every three years.

When training to operate powered industrial trucks you will be trained in the practical use of the vehicles themselves, and you will receive classroom training.

Some of things that will be covered are:

-    The specific features of the powered industrial truck
-    The operating procedures for the powered industrial truck
-    Important safety concerns
-    Health and safety in the workplace and the environment where the powered industrial truck will be used
-    Practical usage and operation of the powered industrial truck
-    You must also demonstrate that you can safely and competently use the powered industrial truck

Industrial trucks are powered vehicles that are designed to be used in factories in order to move heavy, or hazardous, items around. Industrial trucks are particularly useful because most of them are able to physically pick up the loads themselves, which means that manual labour is reduced when they are used. Also, the risk of injuries in lifting heavy items is also reduced.

Industrial trucks can be powered by different power sources, and as such could be classified as either power trucks or as hand trucks.

For example, hand trucks are physically pushed by the manual worker, so that some of the load is taken by the operator. The person using the hand truck then also has to balance the load, as it could topple backwards or forwards. These hand trucks are used to carry medium weighted items, such as refrigerators, washing machines and other items that are more easily ‘trucked’ around, rather than carried.

They are not used to carry very heavy items.

In addition to the two wheel hand trucks, there are four wheel hand trucks used. These hand trucks include dollies, carts, wagons and flat trucks. Many of these trucks feature hydraulic mechanisms to allow for easy loading.

Power trucks are used for the more heavy items, and they are either powered by an engine or by an electric motor, powered by batteries. One such truck is a forklift truck, which features a very powerful fork mechanism on the front of the truck, which can be used for lifting heavy items. Storage solutions are just a step away with these great trucks.

To operate a powered industrial truck takes some knowledge and skill; you certainly cannot just jump on one and be away.  Many an accident has been caused through the improper use of industrial trucks; it is estimated around 95,000 workers each year are injured through this and around 100 killed in incidents relating to powered industrial trucks.

When you use an industrial truck, you must first understand how they work.  Industrial trucks tend to be narrow yet tall so it is not surprising that they can fall over fairly easily; it is certainly not the same level of stability experienced in a car.  Stopping one is also quite different to stopping a car; industrial trucks do not stop as quickly.

To understand how industrial trucks are so different consider how their centre of gravity is different.  With industrial trucks there are two weights each on different sides of a pivot point – that pivot point is the front wheels.  When you put a load on the forks, the load must be balanced by the industrial truck’s weight.  When you pick up a weight on the forks, there is then a new centre of gravity created by the combined two.  How stable the truck is will depend on how much load is on it and where that centre of gravity is.

When you go to use industrial trucks they must always be inspected first and if they are not safe, they must be removed from use immediately for health and safety reasons.