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CEVA Logistics — consolidating scattered small parts in a 90,000 sq ft 3PL warehouse

A contract logistics site with plenty of building and not enough usable pick face. Twenty-six Storeganizer bays, five pocket sizes, and a picking accuracy figure the site now quotes at 100%.

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Storeganizer pocket columns installed across pallet rack bays at an electronics distributor

90,000

sq ft site

26

Storeganizer bays

5

pocket sizes in one design

100%

picking accuracy reported

The situation

	Project profile
Industry	Contract logistics / 3PL
Application	Plumbing spare parts and small-SKU consolidation
System	Storeganizer high-density textile pocket columns in existing pallet rack
Source	Results as reported by the operation and its Storeganizer manufacturer, KTP conTeyor

CEVA Logistics’ team at its Daventry site had 90,000 square feet (roughly 8,362 m²) to work with and a customer whose inventory would not cooperate with it. The problem was not total capacity. It was that a wide range of small SKUs sat spread across a significant area of the building, each one occupying a location far larger than the part inside it.

That pattern is the most common reason a 3PL runs out of room while still looking half empty. Pallet positions and shelf levels are sized for cases, so a plumbing fitting stored in one uses a fraction of the space it is charged for. Multiply that by a long tail of SKUs and a customer’s inventory spreads across an area the picking route then has to cover.

What was installed

CEVA’s business development team identified Storeganizer and designed a solution around 26 bays fitted with five distinct pocket sizes — a detail worth noting, because it is what makes a consolidation like this work. A single pocket size forces every SKU into the same compromise; five sizes in one design let each group of parts sit in an opening scaled to it.

The system used the space below the existing racking rather than adding structure to the building, hanging pocket columns from beams already in place. That kept the conversion inside the existing rack footprint and avoided any construction in an operating warehouse.

Diagram of the Storeganizer universal suspension rail on a pallet rack beam and columns hung up to four rows deep — Columns hang from a suspension rail built to the existing beam profile, up to four rows deep, with front rows rolling aside by hand.

Reported results

Measure	Before	After
Small-SKU storage	Spread across a significant area of a 90,000 sq ft site	Consolidated into 26 bays using five pocket sizes
Pick locations	One address per shelf or pallet position	Multiple right-sized locations within a confined footprint
Picking KPIs	Baseline	Improved
Picking accuracy	Baseline	Reported at 100%

“Our picking KPI has improved and our picking accuracy is currently at 100% thanks to Storeganizer.”

— CEVA Logistics

The accuracy figure is the one that tends to get a 3PL’s attention, because accuracy is contractual. Mispicks in a small-parts operation are usually an addressing problem rather than a training problem: when several look-alike SKUs share a shelf or a bin, the wrong one eventually goes in the box. Giving each SKU its own labelled pocket removes the ambiguity that causes it.

CEVA reported that following the results of this warehouse design, other CEVA sites and customers expressed interest in adding Storeganizer to their own warehouse configurations — which is a reasonable proxy for whether an installation actually worked.

Aisle of Storeganizer textile pocket columns hanging in pallet rack in a distribution centre — Pocket columns consolidate a long tail of small SKUs into a short, dense pick face inside existing rack.

What this means for a US operation

Every warehouse is different, and a result reported elsewhere is evidence rather than a forecast. These are the transferable parts:

Design with multiple pocket sizes from the start. Five sizes in one solution is not complexity for its own sake; it is what stops the outlier SKUs going back onto shelving.
Look under and around the racking you already have. The capacity in a 3PL building is usually not missing, it is badly sized.
Accuracy is a storage decision. If mispicks are hurting a contract, discrete addressing moves the number more reliably than more training does.

The measured averages behind these cases — around 40% more usable space, 42% less travel time and 26% better picking efficiency — come from independent research at the University of Leuven, Belgium (2013), comparing Storeganizer with conventional rack and shelf. To see what the same arithmetic produces in your own bay, use the Storeganizer Designer or ask us to run the numbers with you.

Why this inventory profile suits pocket columns

The transferable part of any case study is the profile, not the logo. These are the characteristics that made this operation a good candidate — and they are the ones worth checking against your own inventory before you consider a conversion.

📦

A long tail of small SKUs

Contract logistics inventory is rarely uniform. When hundreds of low-volume lines each hold a pallet position or a shelf level, the building fills up long before the cube does.

🎯

Accuracy written into a contract

3PL performance is measured and penalised. One SKU per labelled pocket removes the shared-bin ambiguity that produces most mispicks.

🔄

Customers who come and go

Columns unhook and move. When a contract ends, the storage redeploys to the next one instead of being written off.

📐

Space under and around the racking

Consolidating small parts releases whole bays back to pallet storage — capacity the site already paid for.

Why consolidation works: the same bay yields a handful of pick locations as pallet storage and hundreds as pocket columns.

How a conversion like this runs

Four steps, and none of them involve construction. The sequence matters: the slotting analysis comes before the measurement, and the count comes before the order.

Profile the SKUs

We look at item size, stock depth and order frequency for the zone in question — the three properties that decide whether a pocket is the right home for a part.

Measure the bays

Inside width, inside depth, clear height and beam profile. The suspension rail is then manufactured to those dimensions.

Configure and count

Pocket sizes are selected per SKU group and the location count is calculated before anything is ordered.

Install and slot

Columns hang from existing beams in an operating warehouse — no drilling, no anchoring, no permit drawing — then stock is slotted in.

We handle all four in the United States, including the install. Because the system is maintenance free — no motors, no controls, no annual service contract — there is nothing scheduled after handover.

Questions about this project

How many bays did CEVA install?

Twenty-six bays, each fitted with five distinct pocket sizes, at the Daventry site.

What picking accuracy did CEVA report?

CEVA reported that its picking KPI improved and that picking accuracy is currently at 100% with Storeganizer.

Why use five pocket sizes in one installation?

Because a single pocket size forces every SKU into the same compromise. Five sizes let each group of parts sit in an opening scaled to it, which is what allows a wide range of SKUs to be consolidated without sending the outliers back to shelving.

Can this be done in an operating 3PL warehouse?

Yes. Columns hang from existing pallet rack beams with no drilling, anchoring or structural work, so conversions are normally done zone by zone without stopping the operation.

Could your rack do this?

Tell us the bay dimensions and the SKUs giving you trouble. We will come back with a configuration, a location count and an honest view of whether a conversion is worth it.

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