Pigeonhole Storage Overview
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Pigeonhole storage systems are typically manufactured from wood, plastic, or metal depending on the environment they will be used in.
Many simple pigeonhole shelving storage units used for mail sorting or office storage are made from wood. Typically this will be a type of MDF or MFC as it is a low-cost yet durable material. In workshops or industrial environments, however, some pigeonhole units are constructed from metal for strength and durability.
Common uses for pigeonhole storage include:
- Mail / letter sorting
- Paper storage
- Holding Books, CD's or DVD's
- Holding Collectables or Knick-knacks
- Storing and sorting small components or parts
- Tidy shoe or handbag storage
In recent years, versions of pigeonhole storage have become extremely popular for home furniture use. For example, the Ikea Expedit (now Kallax) is a shelving system based on traditional pigeonhole compartment storage design - it's just bigger.
Pigeonholes are used in the warehouse to speed up order picking whilst keeping things highly organised
In warehouse environments, you can often find put wall storage systems, pick walls, pick to light, and pick to pack technologies. These are all based on pigeonhole systems.
A put wall or put to light system is used to break down large batches of items and sort and collate them into customer orders.
At the put wall, each put location (or pigeonhole) represents an individual customer order. Batches of Items are sorted into each order box until an order is completed. The collection of items can then be taken away to be packed at the packing station.
A pick wall is essentially a large wall made up entirely of containers (pigeonholes) where items are placed for storage until they are "picked" by warehouse operatives when they are putting together an order.
To assist putters and pickers in quickly retrieving the correct items from these pick walls, many warehouses employ a "pick to light" system.
A pick-to-light system is where each pigeonhole or storage compartment has a small light which illuminates to guide the picker or putter to the correct box. Once the item is placed or retrieved, the picker presses a small button to switch off the light. This saves a lot of time because pick walls can be extremely large and store hundreds of items.
Pick and put to light offers high levels of productivity and accuracy due to a lack of reading pick sheets or looking at terminals. The user simply scans the order barcode and a light is illuminated in the correct product box, and also shows a quantity of how many items to pick or place at that location. Generally, these systems can improve picking productivity by 30 to 50%.
