Above: The design of Dexco cantilever racking evenly spreads weight across the rack for enhanced stability.
December, 2025- Automation and warehouse management racking systems increasingly go hand in hand. When implementing automation equipment, such as autonomous guided vehicles (AGVs) and automated storage and retrieval systems (AS/RS), understanding the number of stock keeping units (SKUs) a customer has is critical to designing a racking system so it does not underperform.
That’s according to Tracy Buck, national sales manager for Dexco in Leola, Pennsylvania, a manufacturer of I-beam racking systems. “Then you need to understand the dimensions and weights of each SKU so you can start understanding their inventory, and then how we can manage their inventory, and how it will marry up with the warehouse management system.”
The footprint for the racks needed to store the number of SKUs a customer has depends on the customer’s “velocity,” Buck adds, which involves how many SKUs are received and how many are removed over a period of time. Once that variable is known, the footprint can be determined, including how tall the racking system needs to be.
The height is an important consideration because the top 10 to 12 feet will be consumed by the bridge, trolley and access needed for maintenance of an AS/RS’s crane, which can cost $3 million to $5 million when the controls and everything else are included, Buck says. For example, a 30-foot-tall ceiling might have 20 feet of usable space for the crane whereas a 40-foot-tall ceiling is actually needed to access the required number of storage positions. “In this scenario, instead of being able to do it with one crane that costs $3 million, I’ve got to do it with two cranes and spend $6 million.”
Another limiting factor in an existing automated facility when a customer wants to increase racking capacity and go higher is the strength of the concrete floor, he explains, as the concrete might not be thick enough to support the added weight. “Sorry, we can’t do that unless you redo your floor.”
COMMAND PERFORMANCE
In addition to added expenses, a customer experiences underperformance of the racking when it is not thoughtfully designed to incorporate automation equipment, Buck notes. A lot of AGVs, for instance, have vision systems and if it senses an obstruction as it moves down an aisle of racks, the AGV will time out, as it is programmed to do when there is something in the way.
To better understand this, racks from three different manufacturers were loaded to full capacity on one side for a demonstration, he adds, to learn about deflection. Dexco’s racking, which is manufactured with wide-flange I-beam columns, remained the most uniform and straight and was subsequently chosen because the other two candidates leaned in too far and timed out the vehicle.
Sometimes a vision system with an AI-powered camera can cause an AGV to stop when encountering a column arm that is scalloped instead of square, for example, because it does not understand where the column actually starts and stops, Buck says. “We really wouldn’t think about it from a human perspective because an arm is an arm is an arm. AI cameras, however, don’t always have the level of intelligence needed to differentiate between these variations.”
Dexco’s coil racking systems are built using structural I-beam racking with bolt together bracing systems for lateral rigidity, which assists when incorporating AGVs with vision systems.
Dexco extrusion storage systems accommodate long, heavy or delicate materials in automated industrial settings.
AUTONOMOUS DESIGN WORK
Another important element is properly mapping out the routes for AGVs as they maneuver through a warehouse so two are not together in the same path and time each other out, Buck explains. “Those are just some little idiosyncrasies that we’re finding as we’re making our way towards totally autonomous interaction.”
When specifying the height of a rack, Buck says end users must consider all factors of an autonomous fork truck to achieve the desired top lift height. For example, a carriage on top of the truck that sticks up 3 feet above the forks might hit a facility’s fire suppression system. “Even though I can get up there, it’s easy to forget about the additional height needed for the carriage. That can quickly catch you if you’re not watching it.”
That situation is a human error, but design errors happen. Buck notes that understanding load centers is critically important for the whole system to work in synergy without interference and damage. “The forks on autonomous and wire-guided trucks are specifically designed, keeping the correct load center and counterbalances in mind. We all know every fork in every fork truck isn’t the same, and an improper design can result in forks going all the way through a pallet or coil when engaging it, tearing up the bracing in the back.” Such errors can cause costly material damage, too.
KEEPING SAFETY IN SIGHT
With a strong push for proactive safety and not just compliance, near misses and downtime are under more scrutiny than ever before. To enhance worker safety when operating AGVs in a storage facility, Buck says one customer uses a vision system that projects a large circle on the floor that indicates, “I’m a truck and I’m headed in your direction.” When a worker enters the circle, an AGV goes into slow creep mode, and if the worker enters the circle’s inner radius, the AGV slows further to a very slow creep or comes to an emergency stop.
“It can have a built-in bumper or sensor, so if it ever runs into anything, it’ll quickly and automatically e-stop.” Implementing automation equipment into a thoughtfully designed racking system requires effective communication between all the parties involved, Buck says. “It is a hand-in-glove handshake as it has to be extremely precise.”
He adds that he participates in Kaizen events where all the players get together to understand the capabilities of “your partners in technologies” and create a seamless interlock between automation and racking. “The customer should not even see the difference. It’s all one together.”
After years of developing automated racking solutions, Buck says more customers are coming on board and seeing the advantages.
“We are implementing a change within an industry that’s going to impact it across the board,” he says. “We’re not just stacking coils on pallets that are facing eye to the sky and putting another pallet on top of that and sometimes another. It’s an extremely unsafe practice that we see many, many companies doing—and one that I pray will stop. This is a solution that will prevent people from getting injured and even save and help make companies so much more efficient.”
Ross Industrial LLC, dba Dexco, 800/345-8170, dexcoracks.com.
