You decide
The scope of the project, the budget, the priority between stages and the timing of the business. Also which part of the operation can be touched and which cannot.
The method is the same for a small warehouse and for a distribution center: what changes is the scale, not the order of the questions.
What happens when you write to us
Your inquiry is read by the same engineering team that will work on the project. There is no sales layer that later hands you off to someone else. We reply within 24 business hours.
That first reply is not a quote. It says whether there is anything to evaluate with what you told us, which data is missing to evaluate it properly, and what the next step would be. If what you need is not something we can solve, we say so right there, before you invest time in meetings.
The five stages of a project
No stage starts before the previous one has closed with something in writing.
Contact
- What STOKA does
- We read the inquiry, compare it against similar operations and reply within 24 business hours.
- What it needs from you
- The concrete symptom: you have run out of space, orders ship late, the inventory in the system does not match what is on the floor.
- What you receive when it closes
- A reply that says whether there is anything to evaluate, which data is missing and what the next step is.
Data survey
- What STOKA does
- We define what needs to be measured and how, and we check the consistency of what arrives. The evaluation is done remotely with your data; a site visit is scheduled when the project justifies it, and we tell you beforehand what will be verified during that visit.
- What it needs from you
- The floor plan with dimensions and clear height, the product master with its load unit, and the movements of a representative period.
- What you receive when it closes
- The closed list of project data, and help putting together whatever you have not surveyed yet.
Diagnosis and proposal
- What STOKA does
- We calculate the real capacity of the building, compare alternatives in process, layout and equipment, and order by stages what is worth doing.
- What it needs from you
- The constraints that are not in the data: the available budget, the timing of the business and what cannot be touched.
- What you receive when it closes
- The diagnosis and a proposal ordered by stages, with the order of magnitude of the investment for each one.
Execution by stages
- What STOKA does
- We coordinate detailed engineering, the import when there is equipment involved, the installation, the integration with your management system and the acceptance tests.
- What it needs from you
- The approved scope and the work windows your operation can sustain.
- What you receive when it closes
- The stage running, with its documentation. On an automation project, commissioning takes 3 to 4 months. For ordering, equipping and mechanizing, the timeline depends on the floor area and the number of storage locations: we give it to you closed after the survey.
Follow-up
- What STOKA does
- We train the team that operates the system, review how it performs against the real operation and evaluate what makes sense as a next stage.
- What it needs from you
- The team that will operate the system, available for training.
- What you receive when it closes
- Support for the system we installed, and the equipment maintenance plan, which its manufacturer sets and which is delivered with the project documentation.
Integration with the management system your company already uses is evaluated during the survey, not at the end.
What data we ask for, and what each item is for
None of it is paperwork. Each item closes a question that, without it, can only be answered with an estimate. If you are missing one, write to us anyway: helping you put it together is part of the initial work.
- Floor plan with dimensions and clear height
How much volume the building actually has available, which rarely matches the square meters on the deed.
- Product master with its load unit
Whether a standard load unit exists or has to be created. This is what decides which technology enters the conversation and which does not.
- Movements over a representative period
How many inbound and outbound movements per hour the system has to sustain at peak, not on average. A system sized on the average saturates on the first peak day.
- Headcount and shifts
How much of the current cost is labor, and how much of that labor is walking and moving loads rather than adding value.
- Available lifting equipment
What moves the load today — forklifts, stackers, pallet trucks — and how much of it stays in use after the project.
- Building and business constraints
Columns, doors, suspended installations, the lease and seasonality. These are what rule out alternatives before anyone draws them.
Anyone who cannot yet gather this data is not ready for a project, and it is better to say so early than late. If the project moves forward, the detailed survey is completed through a form that can be saved half-finished.
What the diagnosis delivers
Four things, in writing. The current state of the operation, measured rather than described. The real capacity the building has today, which is the question almost nobody has answered. The proposal ordered by stages, with what each one solves. And the order of magnitude of the investment for each stage.
It carries no closed prices: a price set before detailed engineering is an invented number. It does not promise a percentage result either. What it states is what limits your operation today, what real capacity the building has and in what order it would make sense to move. If the conclusion is that investing is not yet worthwhile, that is written down too, with the reason.
What you decide and what STOKA decides
STOKA decides and signs
The sizing, the engineering of the system and the technical verification. If the calculation does not work, no budget will change it: we say so and propose something else.
There is a third category that neither of us decides. Floor flatness tolerance and permissible floor load are set by the manufacturer of the equipment chosen, and verified by a licensed professional with the measurement taken before installation. They are not negotiated and they are not estimated.
How we work outside Argentina
STOKA works from its base in Mendoza, Argentina, and evaluates projects across Latin America. The evaluation is done remotely with data from your operation, in the same language and in nearby time zones, and we travel when the project justifies it.
What we will not tell you is that we have an office where we do not. Outside Mendoza there is no branch, subsidiary or resident team, and a time-to-site we cannot sustain is not a selling point: it is a problem waiting to happen. How each stage is executed in your country is defined in the proposal, with the owner and the scope in plain sight.
What happens if we tell you no
It happens often, and it is part of the method. Sometimes the operation is about to change and any design made today will be obsolete in six months. Sometimes the problem is not volume but order, and buying equipment would mean overspending to solve something that reassigning storage locations fixes.
When the answer is that it is not worth it yet, we tell you the reason and what would have to change for it to become worthwhile: which figure to measure again, which business decision unblocks it, which earlier step is worth taking first. You keep the diagnosis, and with it the conversation stays open.
Frequently asked questions
The warehouse floor plan with dimensions and clear height, the product list with its load unit, and the movements of a representative period. That is enough to start. If you are missing one, write to us anyway: helping you put it together is part of the initial work.
Not for the first evaluation: it is done remotely with the data you send. A site visit is scheduled when the project justifies it, and we tell you beforehand what will be verified during that visit.
We reply within 24 business hours. That first reply says whether there is anything to evaluate, which data is missing and what the next step would be. It is not a quote: prices are neither published nor estimated by email.
Yes. You enter at whichever step the budget allows, and the first one — layout, storage locations, processes and training — does not require buying equipment. A small, well-organized warehouse performs better than a large one without defined locations.
You keep the diagnosis: what limits your operation today, what real capacity the building has and in what order it would make sense to move. If the conclusion is that investing is not yet worthwhile, we tell you the reason.
The next step
Tell us the problem. If we can solve it, we will show you how. If we cannot, we will say so up front. We reply within 24 business hours.