Choosing a storage system goes wrong when you start with the equipment. A catalogue organises the world by product family; an operation organises itself around what it moves every day. The order that works is different: first what your operation moves, then what the building you already have restricts, then what access criterion your goods require, and only at the end which family of system fits those three answers. This page walks through that order, presents the families available today and closes with the most common outcome of all: reorganising what you already have.
How do you choose a storage system?
You choose it the opposite way round from how a catalogue presents it. A catalogue starts with the equipment and then looks for someone it suits; a sound decision starts with the operation and ends at the equipment. The order that works has four steps, and each one conditions the next. First, what your operation moves: load unit, number of SKUs, turnover profile, lines per order and seasonality. Second, what the building you have today restricts. Third, what access criterion your goods require. And only at the end, which family of system answers all of that. When someone arrives already knowing which machine they want, they have skipped the first three steps, and what follows is not a decision: it is the justification of a purchase that was already made.
First: what your operation moves
Five figures define most of the decision, and none of them come from the building. The load unit: whether what comes in and out is a full pallet, a carton, a loose item or a mix of the three. The number of SKUs, meaning distinct stock references: two hundred codes and twenty thousand codes are not the same problem, because the second needs to reach anything without moving the rest and the first does not. The turnover profile: what share of your references explains most of the movements, which is almost always a small minority. Lines per order: whether each order touches one reference or twenty completely changes where the effort belongs. And seasonality: how far the peak sits from the average, because sizing for the peak leaves idle capacity for most of the year, and sizing for the average leaves you without an operation in the month you sell the most. These five numbers come from your management system, not from a walk around the warehouse.
Second: what the building restricts
The building does not choose the system, but it rules options out. What gets verified is concrete: the real clear height under the lowest installation — sprinklers, lights, beams — which is never the height to the roof; the position and spacing of the columns; how the floor behaves under load; the number and position of the doors; the yard space available for manoeuvring; and what the current permits require. A technician measures all of that during the survey, with instruments, before anything is drawn, and it goes into the report. STOKA does not rule warehouses out by threshold: if a value does not work, the answer is not to close the file but to change the family of system or correct the condition. The automated systems STOKA integrates work in a range of 7 to 40 metres in height (STOKA criterion); below that, the ground belongs to conventional racking and to reorganisation, which solve far more than people expect.
Third: what access criterion you need
This is where you decide whether you can store in depth or need to reach any pallet without moving another. There are three criteria, and it helps to name them in plain language. FIFO, first in, first out, means the first thing in is the first thing out: it suits goods that age or become obsolete. FEFO, first expired, first out, means what expires soonest leaves first: it is mandatory in food, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics, and it is not the same as FIFO, because two batches received on the same day can expire months apart. Direct access means you reach any reference without removing any other: that is what you need when you have many references and few pallets of each. As a rule, the more density a system gives you, the less direct access it leaves. Skipping this question is the most frequent cause of a new warehouse that works worse than the old one.
Fourth: which family of system fits
Only now does it make sense to look at equipment. Conventional racking answers how to reach everything with the lowest investment. High-density systems answer how to store more pallets of few references on the same floor. Mezzanines answer how to add working area without building. Automated pallet storage, or AS/RS, meaning automated storage and retrieval system, answers how to use the height without a forklift. Automated carton storage answers how to prepare many small orders without walking. The shuttle robot answers how to gain density while keeping movement in several aisles at once. Autonomous vehicles — AGV, which follow a fixed route, and AMR, which navigate and avoid obstacles on their own — answer how to move loads between points without adding staff. Vertical storage answers how to organise small, high-value parts. Internal conveying connects zones that today are joined by forklift trips. And management software, the WMS or warehouse management system, answers the question no piece of steel can: where everything is and in what order it should be touched.
The trap of choosing by purchase price
Value recovered time using your actual operating costs and measurements of the tasks that change. Distinguish time available for other work, reduced overtime and expenses that can actually be avoided.
Very often the answer is to reorganise what you already have
This is the honest ending of the page. In a large share of the warehouses STOKA surveys, the problem is not a lack of equipment: it is that the fastest-moving references sit at the back, that the aisle was sized for equipment no longer in use, that three different location conventions coexist, or that the management system does not reflect what is on the floor. None of that is fixed by buying. It is fixed with a turnover analysis, a layout redesign, a single location naming convention and counting discipline. And it has to be done before automating anyway, because a disorganised warehouse that gets automated is still a disorganised warehouse, now with more money inside it. If after reordering the operation still hits the ceiling, then the equipment conversation makes sense: resting on a process that already works.
The order matters more than the catalogue
If you take one thing from this page, let it be the order: operation, building, access criterion, family of system. In that order the conversation is short and the decision holds on its own; the other way round it becomes a specification argument nobody can win. And keep the last question for the very end: if reorganising what you already have solves most of the problem, start there and leave the equipment for what remains. STOKA would rather say that before a quotation than after an installation.
Frequently asked questions
With your own data, not with a catalogue. You need five figures: load unit, number of SKUs, turnover profile, lines per order and seasonality. All of them come from your management system. With those five you can already rule out half the families of system without setting foot in the warehouse, and the technical survey is then used to confirm, not to guess.
FIFO means first in, first out: stock rotates by receipt date. FEFO means first expired, first out: it rotates by expiry date. They are not equivalent. Two batches received on the same day can expire months apart, so in food, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics FIFO is not enough and the system has to be able to work by batch and expiry date.
There is no magic number, and anyone who gives you one without seeing your operation is guessing. What decides is not the number of references but how they combine with daily movements and available height. A warehouse with few references and very high turnover can justify automation; one with many references and little daily movement almost never does. It is calculated case by case during the survey.
STOKA installation takes 3 to 4 months from the purchase order, covering manufacturing, shipping, assembly and commissioning. Before the order there is a survey and design stage whose length depends on how well ordered your data is: the better documented the operation, the shorter it gets. A layout reorganisation, by contrast, can start within weeks.
No. Density and direct access pull in opposite directions: the more pallets you fit on the same floor, the more pallets you have to move to reach one at the back. If you have many references and few pallets of each, a high-density system will cost you time every single day. Density pays off when there are few references and high volume per reference.