What is Palletization in Warehousing? How It Works, Methods & Tips

Palletization is the process of stacking and arranging items on pallets for storage, handling, or shipment. Warehouses commonly use palletization to organize, store, and transport goods efficiently, optimizing space utilization and streamlining operations.

Why Items Are Palletized?

• Transportation: Palletized items can be transported in larger quantities & more efficiently via trucks
  
  
• Handling: Palletized goods can be efficiently and safely moved using forklifts or pallet jacks.
  
  
• Safety: Stacking goods securely on pallets minimizes the risk of damage or loss during handling and transport. Palletization helps to protect fragile goods and ensures that they reach their destination in optimal condition.
  
  
• Space: Palletization enables efficient use of storage space as goods can be stacked vertically. This leads to better stock management and lower storage costs.
  
  
• Organization: items can be located and accessed more easily when needed.
  
  
• Standardization: Using pallets for packaging creates a standardized unit for handling and storage, simplifying inventory tracking.

Palletizing is an increasingly important method of packing as companies handle larger volumes of goods, necessitating more efficient storage, transportation, and handling solutions. For this reason, warehouses are looking for palletization to be done more effectively - either through hardware automation or software.

Ways of Palletization

Modern automated systems, like automated palletizers, are becoming a buzzword in palletization. However, these expensive robotics are primarily accessible to large enterprises whose operations can accommodate this technology, as they are designed to only handle same-size SKUs and do not support the variety of SKUs typical in most palletization scenarios.

In most cases palletization is carried out manually - workers will consider item dimensions and weight to stack products onto pallets.

However, effective palletization requires experienced warehouse workers who have years of expertise. This is particularly evident in the picking and packing operations. Pickers navigate the warehouse to retrieve items from shelves and racks and place them on pallets. During the pick tour, they have to consider various parameters: (1) picking sequence, (2) item location, (3), item dimensions & weight, (4) max. volume or weight constraints. This process often involves case picking, which is the selection of individual cases or cartons of products from inventory, typically containing multiple units of the same SKU, and placing them on pallets.

While palletizing homogeneous items (items of the same size) is relatively straightforward, challenges arise when handling items with variations in sizes and weights. For this reason, companies are looking for software assistance that complements the functionality of their order management systems (OMS) and warehouse management systems (WMS) when it comes to palletization, such as picking optimization and palletization software.

It allows companies to:

• cut down on walking distances,
• ship less air on pallets,
• save on transportation costs,
• less product damage,
• and decrease onboarding times of new & temporary workers.

These forms of microservices allow companies to quickly integrate the software solutions into existing systems, offering immediate results, offering financial returns in a fraction of the time compared to hardware automation such as automated palletizers.

Learn more about optimizing Pick and Pack operations in warehousing.