Frequently asked questions

STOKA is an Argentine integrator of automated storage and retrieval systems (ASRS), based in Maipú, Mendoza. It designs, imports, installs and maintains automated warehouses — stacker cranes, shuttle robots, vertical lift modules and WMS/WCS software — for industrial and logistics operations in Argentina and Chile.

The base is at Carril Rodríguez Peña 35, Maipú, Mendoza. STOKA runs projects across the entire Argentine territory — Buenos Aires, Córdoba, Rosario, Mendoza and the rest of the country — and serves projects in Chile with engineering and support from Argentina, in the same time zone and the same language.

It imports it and makes it run. Manufacturing is handled by specialized plants; STOKA takes care of the engineering, the sizing, the importation, the assembly, the commissioning, the integration with your management system and the support afterwards. One single point of contact, and one single party accountable for the result.

With operations where the square meter is expensive or hard to come by: distribution centers, logistics operators, bonded warehouses, food and beverage plants, pharmaceutical companies, mining and cold chain. The typical size starts at warehouses of about 2,000 m² with free height available.

In who answers when the system stops. STOKA does the engineering, the assembly and the service with its own team in Argentina, keeps critical spare parts in the country and works in your same time zone. A provider without a local structure depends on technicians and parts that travel from abroad.

It depends on how much free height you are wasting. Renting adds a permanent cost: in the premium Buenos Aires metro market, an extra 1,000 m² costs about USD 88,000 per year, every year. Automating is a one-time investment that can triple the capacity of the warehouse you are already paying for.

Up to 66% of the floor area. A conventional warehouse loses volume in two places: the aisles the forklift needs and the height nobody uses. By storing at height and eliminating aisles, the same floor area holds up to three times more goods.

When there is no free height to take advantage of, when the warehouse has fewer than about 1,000 pallet positions, when the product mix changes completely every few months, or when the building is rented on a short lease: the investment stays tied to a property that isn't yours.

From 7 meters up there are already systems that perform, although the big jump appears from 10 to 12 meters. Systems go up to 40 meters. With less than 7 meters, it is worth looking at vertical tower storage before a full pallet system.

Yes, but with a different technology. In small floor areas, vertical lift modules and tote systems perform better than a full pallet ASRS: they take up a few square meters of floor, reach 10 meters in height and bring the goods to the operator with no structural construction work.

It depends on the number of positions and the required speed, not on the square meters. A typical project of 1,000 to 3,000 positions sits in the range of hundreds of thousands of dollars. The price is defined after the site survey, not before: the only serious way to give a number is to measure the operation.

Between 18 and 36 months in most projects. The timeframe depends above all on the cost of the square meter in your area: the more expensive the rent you stop paying, the faster the investment comes back. In areas with cheap rent, the return stretches out.

Yes. There are bank credit lines for capital goods and leasing, with terms of up to 10 years. Rates and terms change often, so they are quoted at the time of the operation. STOKA prepares the technical file the bank asks for.

Yes, and they have to be analyzed case by case. There are promotion regimes for capital goods with accelerated depreciation and VAT recovery, subject to requirements such as the MiPyME certificate and minimum amounts. STOKA provides the technical documentation; the tax treatment is defined by your accountant.

Preventive maintenance, wear parts and energy. Scheduled maintenance takes a few hours per month and is planned outside peak hours. The total cost over ten years is usually lower than that of an equivalent European system, above all because of response times and technician travel.

An ASRS is an automated storage and retrieval system: machines that store and retrieve goods without a person entering the storage area. Instead of the operator going to fetch the product, the system brings it to them. That makes it possible to store at height and without aisles.

The stacker crane is a machine that travels along a fixed aisle, rising and lowering to store and retrieve pallets. The shuttle robot goes inside the racking and moves along the channels. The stacker crane performs better at height; the shuttle, in density and in movements per hour.

The WMS is the software that knows where everything is and decides where to store it; the WCS is the one that gives the machines their movement orders. The WMS thinks, the WCS executes. An automated system needs both, and they usually come integrated.

Yes. Integration is done through a data interface and is already solved for the systems most used in Argentina and Chile: SAP, Oracle, Tango and in-house developments. It is defined in the engineering stage, not at the end: what information travels, at what moment and in which direction.

Yes. There is equipment prepared for positive and negative cold: stacker cranes operate down to -30 °C and shuttle robots down to -25 °C. Besides solving the operation, they take staff out of the chamber, which is where the cold hits hardest in absenteeism and labor cost.

The system stops safely and holds the position of every load. When power returns, the software rebuilds the inventory state and resumes from where it left off, with no loss of traceability. For critical operations, backup power is sized in the engineering stage.

Scheduled preventive maintenance, on the order of a few hours per month, plus replacement of the highest-wear components according to hours of use. It is planned in windows outside the operating peak. STOKA keeps critical spare parts in Argentina so a failure doesn't stop the operation for weeks.

Not entirely. Assembly is planned by sectors so the warehouse keeps operating, and migration is done in stages. Stoppage windows are agreed in the schedule before starting, and they usually concentrate on the commissioning and on the migration of the inventory.

STOKA does, on site and with the system already installed. Training covers daily operation, resolving the most frequent incidents and using the management software. The typical learning curve is days, not months: the operator stops searching for goods and moves to working at a fixed station.

Not necessarily. In most projects, staff are reassigned to higher-value tasks — quality control, preparing special orders, supervising the system — and what gets eliminated is the walking, the pallet hauling and the picking errors. The decision about headcount belongs to each company.

The same team that did the project handles them. STOKA keeps an inventory of critical spare parts in Argentina and provides technical support in Spanish, in your same time zone. Only what requires factory intervention escalates abroad; the rest is resolved in the country.

Yes. Chilean projects are served with engineering and support from Argentina: same time zone, same language and coordinated technical site visits. The team can visit your facilities, diagnose the operation and present a turnkey proposal under the same conditions as in Argentina.