The major advantage of carton flow racking system is that the merchandise will remain better organized and will be easier to pick and find. With the use of the carton flow rack, the product will be automatically rotated on a FIFO system or on a first in, first out basis. The merchandise is stocked in the rear of the carton rack and then moves toward the area where it is being picked in front of the inclined shelf and is equipped with specially made roller track. Once the carton will be removed from the picking station, the next one in the line will roll to the front. Carton flow will always keep the items within reach and for easier pick up. Inventory is much easier to control and monitor since the products are fully visible all the time. The process of picking and restocking typically offer the one of the greatest opportunities whenever you want to improve efficiency when dealing with order-picking operations. With carton flow racking system in place, you can save labor up to about 75 percent and can be realized immediately. Because several items are picked from the front of the pack and stacked from the rear, both of the functions can be performed with minimized travel and without interference. In a static kind of storage system like standard shelving, pickers and stockers will often do some unnecessary travel.
History
The president of Grand Union Co, Lansing Peter Shield applied for patent for the first gravity-feed rear design with the use of nylon strips and Unistrut in 1945 which was later approved in the year 1948. The flow system consisted of several runways which were inclined. The device was gravity-driven. A stockman will place the merchandise on the rear of every runway and as the shopper will select an item, the item that is behind it would slide forward to replace the item that was taken by the customer. Grand Union formed a company and called it Food-O-Mat. Their main thrust was in selling the carton flow system and Gardner Hinckley was the first president. It was Gauer Metal Products Inc who manufactured the carton flow stacking system for Grand Union/ Food-O-Mat. When Lansind Shield suffered heart attack and died, Thomas Butler was appointed as the new president. Butler had no interest in using the carton flow units as the main product in Grand Union supermarket, so consequently Food-O-Mat went off and then sold the product with its manufacturer, Gauer Metal Products.
Carton flow
Over the past years, the carton flow design has hurdled through countless of alterations and has now evolved to major shelving units.