A warehouse is a commercial building for storage of goods. Warehouses are used by manufacturers, importers, exporters, wholesalers, transport businesses, customs, etc. They usually have loading docks to load and unload goods from trucks. They often have cranes and forklifts for moving goods, which are usually placed on pallets loaded into pallet racks.

Warehousing Equipments

The main categories of warehousing equipment include: Storage & Handling Equipment and Engineered Systems.

Storage and Handling Equipment

Storage equipment is used to hold or buffer materials during "downtimes," or times when they are not being transported. The majority of storage equipment refers to pallets, shelves or racks onto which materials may be stacked in an orderly manner to await transportation or consumption. Many companies have investigated increased efficiency possibilities in storage equipment by designing proprietary packaging that allows materials or products of a certain type to conserve space while in inventory.

There are many types of Industrial Trucks: Racks / Stacking Frames / Shelves, Bins and Drawers / Mezzanines

Engineered Systems

Engineered systems cover a variety of units that work cohesively to enable storage and transportation. They are often automated. A good example of an engineered system is an Automated Storage and Retrieval System, often abbreviated AS/RS, which is a large automated organizational structure involving racks, aisles and shelves accessible by a "shuttle" system of retrieval.

Conveyor Systems / Robotic Delivery Systems / Automatic guided vehicles (AGV)