Structural Pallet Rack in an Automotive Component Plant: Means Industries

A parts plant stores three inventories with three different rules — raw steel, work in process and finished goods — inside a building full of forklift traffic. Here is how we plan heavy-duty racking for automotive manufacturing.

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Manufacturing warehouse aisle with pallet rack signed for raw materials, work in process and finished goods

2020 – 2024

Years Means Industries worked with us on pallet rack

Automotive

Component manufacturing, not distribution

3 inventories

Raw material, WIP and finished goods under one roof

Heavy & cyclic

The load case structural rack is built for

The project

Means Industries is an automotive component manufacturer. Material Handling USA supplied pallet rack for the company across a series of projects between 2020 and 2024, and wire mesh partitions alongside the rack in two of those years. The client, those years and the product categories are the only project specifics we publish.

A manufacturing plant is a fundamentally different racking problem from a distribution centre, and the difference is not size — it is that a plant’s storage exists to feed a process that must not stop. Rack in a warehouse serves orders. Rack in a parts plant serves machines, and the cost of a wrong position is measured in line downtime rather than a late shipment.

This page sets out how we approach pallet rack systems for a component manufacturing operation: the three separate inventories, why structural rack often wins, and what plant traffic does to steel over a decade.

What we publish

We publish the client, the years we worked together and the product categories supplied. We never publish plant layouts, room dimensions, production volumes, part information, storage quantities or contract values.

Returnable plastic containers and stacked totes stored on labelled pallet rack beams in a plant — Work in process in returnable containers: a buffer between operations, not a warehouse inventory.

Three inventories that need three different rules

Almost every component plant runs raw material, work in process and finished goods through the same building, and the single most useful thing a storage design can do is stop treating them as one inventory.

Raw material is heavy, arrives in bulk from a small number of suppliers, and is consumed in a predictable pattern. It rewards density and heavy-capacity positions near the receiving door and the first operation.

Work in process is the awkward one. It moves constantly, is usually in returnable containers or on stillages rather than standard pallets, and its storage requirement is really a buffer between operations that run at different rates. WIP wants accessibility and short travel far more than it wants cube.

Finished goods behave like a distribution inventory: shipped to schedules, often with lot traceability, and staged against truck departures. This is where rotation discipline and clean addressing pay.

Designing one uniform rack layout across all three is how plants end up with heavy steel stored at the far end of the building and WIP blocking an aisle.

Structural or roll-formed? In a plant, ask twice

In a clean distribution centre, roll-formed teardrop rack is usually the right economic answer. In a component plant the calculation shifts, and often lands on structural pallet rack.

Three plant-specific pressures drive that:

Pressure	What it does to rack	Why structural helps
Constant forklift traffic	Uprights take repeated low-level impacts	Heavier hot-rolled sections tolerate impact far better
Very heavy unit loads	Beam deflection and upright capacity govern	Higher capacities at the same bay footprint
Bolted-in accessories	Guards, decking and stops get added over time	Bolted connections accept modification cleanly
Long service life	Plants keep rack for decades	Repairable, and less sensitive to minor section damage
Wash-down or oily floors	Corrosion at the base plate	Galvanised structural options available

Steel coils and palletized cartons stored on heavy-duty pallet rack beams in a manufacturing plant — Heavy, dense unit loads on a decked rack row — the load case where capacity and deflection both matter.

None of that makes roll-formed rack wrong in a plant. Teardrop selective racking is quicker to reconfigure, cheaper per position and perfectly adequate in low-traffic areas such as finished goods staging or a supply store. The right answer in most plants is mixed: structural where the traffic and the loads are, roll-formed where they are not.

What matters is that the choice is made deliberately, per zone, from the actual unit loads and the actual traffic — not applied uniformly across the building because one bid was cheaper per bay.

Do not skip the deflection check

Capacity is the headline number, but in heavy manufacturing storage the visible problem is usually deflection: beams that carry the rated load while sagging enough to worry operators and to make placement awkward. Ask for the deflection over the span at the design load, not just the capacity, and compare alternatives on both numbers.

Raw material and coil storage

Raw stock is where the heaviest numbers in the plant live, and where the storage method has to match the handling method rather than the other way round.

Store coil the way it is handledCoils moved by crane and coils moved by a coil-handling forklift want different presentation. Cradles, saddles or decked heavy-capacity levels all work — but only if the retrieval equipment can reach the position cleanly.

Keep the heavy stock lowWeight at height is expensive in steel and in risk. The heaviest unit loads belong at floor and second level, with lighter, less frequently used material above.

Bar, tube and long stock on cantileverCantilever racking handles unpalletized long material without a front column in the way — the right system for bar stock, tube and extrusion.

Short travel to the first operationRaw storage that is 200 feet from the press or the saw creates a forklift trip every cycle. Locate the raw zone against the process, not against the wall that happened to be free.

Plan for oil and swarfPlant floors are not warehouse floors. Base plates, anchors and the lowest beam level take oil, coolant and debris; specify finishes and clearances accordingly.

Density only where the profile is stablePush-back rack can pay for a raw material stored in quantity to a stable schedule. It does not pay for a stock list that changes every quarter.

Steel coils and heavy palletized material stored on pallet rack beneath an overhead crane in a plant — Where a crane serves the storage area, rack height and aisle position have to respect the crane envelope.

Cranes and rack have to be designed together

In a plant with overhead cranes, the rack layout is constrained by the crane’s hook approach, runway and lift height, and the rack cannot be braced into crane columns without engineering review. Get the crane envelope on the rack drawing before ordering steel.

Long row of pallet rack with wire decking holding boxed and binned parts in an automotive parts warehouse — Decked levels turn a pallet rack row into usable storage for boxed, binned and unpalletized parts.

WIP, returnable containers and buffers

Work in process is the inventory that most plant rack designs get wrong, because it is planned as storage when it is really flow control.

Design to the container, not to the pallet. Returnable plastic containers, steel stillages and custom racks rarely match a 48×40 footprint. Beam length, depth and deck type should come from the actual container, including how it stacks and whether it nests when empty. Empty container storage is a real requirement that is almost always forgotten at design time.

Buffer where the rate changes. A buffer belongs between two operations that run at different speeds, physically close to both. Rack positioned at the point of use beats a bigger central store almost every time.

Make the level layout match the handling. If containers are placed by a counterbalance truck, elevations follow the mast. If they are moved by a walkie stacker or hand cart, the practical elevations are much lower and the number of usable levels drops.

Keep it addressable. WIP that lives in “wherever there was space” is what turns a five-minute retrieval into a twenty-minute search. Aisle-bay-level addressing applies to the plant floor just as much as to the warehouse.

Finished goods, traceability and shipping

The finished-goods end of a component plant is where manufacturing meets logistics, and the design priorities change again.

Rotation and traceability. Automotive supply chains take lot traceability seriously. Single-deep selective positions with disciplined labelling make lot control simple. Where volume justifies density, pallet flow lanes enforce first-in, first-out physically rather than relying on operator memory — which is exactly why they suit date- or lot-controlled finished goods.

Stage against the truck, not against the wall. Finished goods positions should be closest to the shipping doors, with floor-marked staging that cannot creep into the aisle.

Protect the pick and load face. The bays nearest the dock take the most traffic and the most damage. That is where guards earn their money.

Segregate what needs segregating. Quality holds, customer returns and rework need their own clearly bounded positions — physically separate, obviously labelled, and where required, secured behind wire mesh partitions.

One addressing scheme for the whole building — raw, WIP and finished goods included.
Quality hold and rework positions physically separated and labelled, not improvised.
Full-width wire decking anywhere boxed, binned or non-palletized loads are placed.
Staging areas floor-marked, with a rule about how long material may occupy them.
Empty container storage designed in, not discovered later.

Diagram of straight and notched floor-mounted column guards protecting pallet rack uprights — Floor-mounted column guards: the cheapest component in the building, protecting the most loaded one.

Impact, anchorage and inspection in a plant environment

Plant rack takes more punishment than warehouse rack. Traffic is continuous, aisles are shared with tuggers and hand carts, and material handling happens on every shift, not just at receiving and shipping times.

Guard the predictable impact points. Column guards, end-of-row protectors and bollards at aisle ends, corners, dock approaches and anywhere a route crosses a rack line. Floor-mounted guards absorb the energy that would otherwise deform an upright at the point where it carries the most load.

Anchor to the engineered design. Anchor type, embedment and count come from the rack engineer’s drawings, and along the Wasatch Front the seismic design category makes that anchorage load-bearing rather than nominal. Our anchor bolt guidance covers the practical detail. Rack design itself follows ANSI MH16.1 from the Rack Manufacturers Institute at MHI.

Report, unload, evaluate. Any contact with rack is reported immediately, the bay is unloaded, and it stays out of service until it has been assessed through a documented rack inspection and repair process. In a plant this rule has to survive shift changes and contractor traffic, which means it has to be written down.

Keep capacity information current. OSHA’s materials-handling requirement, 29 CFR 1910.176(b), requires stored material to be stacked and secured against collapse. When a beam level is moved to suit a new container, the posted capacity is recalculated with it.

Manufacturing plant racking FAQs

Is structural pallet rack worth it in a manufacturing plant?

Often, yes — in the zones with heavy unit loads and constant forklift traffic. Structural rack uses heavier hot-rolled sections with bolted connections, so it tolerates impact and heavy cyclic loading better and accepts bolted accessories cleanly. Roll-formed teardrop rack remains a good choice for lighter, lower-traffic zones, which is why most plants end up with both.

How should a plant store raw material, WIP and finished goods?

As three separate zones with three sets of rules: heavy raw material in high-capacity positions close to the first operation, WIP as accessible buffers positioned between the operations they serve, and finished goods in single-deep or flow positions near the shipping doors with clean lot addressing.

How do you store returnable containers and stillages on pallet rack?

Design to the container instead of to a standard pallet footprint. Beam length, rack depth, deck type and beam elevations all come from the container’s real dimensions, how it stacks loaded, and how it nests when empty — and empty container storage should be designed in from the start.

Can pallet rack be installed under an overhead crane?

It can, but the layout has to be designed around the crane’s hook approach, runway and lift height, and rack must not be attached to or braced against crane structure without engineering review. Put the crane envelope on the rack drawing before steel is ordered.

What is the most common rack mistake in an automotive plant?

Treating the whole building as one storage problem. A single uniform layout puts heavy raw material far from the first operation, leaves WIP without designed buffer positions, and forces returnable containers onto bays sized for pallets.

How often should plant pallet rack be inspected?

At minimum a documented annual inspection by a competent person, plus routine visual checks and an immediate report-and-unload rule after any impact. Plant rack takes more traffic than warehouse rack, so unreported damage accumulates faster.

Does moving a beam level change the rack’s rated capacity?

Yes. Posted capacity is calculated for a specific configuration of beam elevations and loads. When levels are moved to suit a new container or a new part, the configuration has changed and the capacity information has to be recalculated and re-posted.

Planning storage for a plant or production facility?

We design, supply and install manufacturing storage rack, structural pallet rack and rack protection across Utah and the Intermountain West, and we install what we sell.

Request a Quote Call (800) 326-4403

Rack That Keeps a Production Line Fed

Material Handling USA designs, supplies and installs heavy-duty pallet rack for automotive, aerospace and industrial manufacturers across Utah and the Intermountain West.