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Narrow Aisle Ltd, better known as Flexi,
celebrated 25 years of its ground-
breaking articulated narrow aisle
and VNA trucks at its headquarters
in Dudley in May. In that time over
5,000 units have been sold in the UK
and around the world, the majority
of which are still in service – almost
embarrassingly so: the company’s ECO
scheme to buy back life-expired trucks
and completely rebuild them, thus
saving 65% of the ‘sunk Carbon’ in the
original build, has somewhat stalled as
owners are reluctant to sell back their
faithful veterans!
Over the years Flexi has continued
to innovate in response to customer
requirements and developments
in warehousing practice, but the
fundamental selling point remains, as
founder and MD Peter Wooldridge
explains. “Until the Flexi was
developed, companies had little
alternative but to operate a two truck
system with a counterbalance truck for
yard work feeding a reach truck inside
the warehouse. Flexi loads and unloads
lorries and delivers pallets directly
to the racking in a single operation.
Sam Tulip visits the West Midlands to mark 25 years
of the Flexi brand.
Wide horizons
Working in aisles a tight as 1.6m and up
to heights of 13m, operators can save at
least 30% on storage costs.”
Product innovation and variations on a
theme continue apace, not always in the
expected direction. Sales and Marketing
Director John Maguire notes, for
example, the success of the VNA range
(with a further reduction in axle width for
aisles based on the Euro Pac standard
(much of Flexi’s business has historically
been around the ISO size). “These
inevitably enjoy lower yard capability,”
says Maguire, “and we weren’t sure
there would be a demand, but they have
proved very popular with firms replacing
man-up and guided units.”
Also recently introduced is the
Flexi ‘CuBEMAX’, which is tackling
requirements that might otherwise
be met by shuttle systems. These are
not merely expensive, but often the
need to move pallets in and out of the
system slows operations and can even
increase the number of trucks required.
CuBEMAX allows double depth storage
from floor to an 11m ceiling, increasing
storage capacity by up to 50%.
Unsurprisingly, e-fulfillment is a major
driver of development, for example
of variants allowing white and brown
goods to be handled in bulk packs
and in much less space using special
clamping units. Flexi is working closely
with accessory designers, especially as
existing designs for engined trucks can
impose excessive pressures on electric
hydraulic pump motors.
A particularly interesting spin on this is
the new Flex ‘iPICK’ system, inspired
by emerging practice particularly in
the US grocery industry. As the name
suggests, this is a picking solution,
but for picking by the pallet layer, to
make up mixed pallets, rather than
by the case into roll-cages or similar.
Maguire says the physical alterations
required in the warehouse are small,
(although rewriting WMS and ERP may
be non-trivial) and layer picking allows
case pick rates of over 1500 and hour,
compared with 250 on a comparable
conventional pick face.
Layer picking does of course require
customers to be prepared to change
their order profiles – and to be able to
accept pallets rather than roll cages,
which is not a ‘given’ in a UK high
street – but users report payback
of less than 9 months. Interestingly,
though, the main driver for this
approach in the US isn’t operational
efficiency, but the urgent need to
reduce the costs of injury, absence and
litigation caused by intensive manual
case-picking operations.
It is early days, but Maguire says he
wouldn’t be surprised if in 5 years the
firm isn’t selling more FlexiPick units
than of the conventional trucks.
54
Logistics Business Magazine | September 2015
WAREHOUSE TRUCKS