Carton Flow is a material handling solution that addresses the two major cost drivers in today's distribution and manufacturing facilities: labor and space costs.

Order picking accounts for 40-60% of an operation's total labor cost. Most facilities use pallet racking or shelving as their storage medium. These storage mediums are static - the product remains in its' stored position. Once the product in the front is picked, additional picks require reaching, bending, and pulling. This adds time to the pick process and puts additional strain and stress on employees.

Additionally, for less than full pallet and shelving, static storage must be restocked from the front (picking aisle) creating a LIFO (Last In, First Out) pick rotation. The combination of difficult restocking and picking hard to access products results in poor space utilization

Carton Flow remedies the inefficiencies of static storage by creating a dynamic storage medium. Therefore, when the front product is picked, the remaining product flows to the front. This ensures product is always at the most accessible pick point - the front. This increases pick rates up to 30% versus static storage pick rates. Additionally it eliminates reaching, bending and pulling, producing an ergonomic safe picking process. For most operations carton flow should be used for medium and slower moving SKU's. Typically this represents 40-70% of an operation's inventory. Carton Flow systems condense and organize SKU's to increase pick efficiency and minimize travel. For static storage systems up to 85% of a picker's time is spent traveling. A good carton flow system should reduce travel time by 40-80% when compared to a pick process utilizing static storage.

Pick modules are specialized carton flow systems designed for high volume order picking. Pick modules are especially effective for large each pick operations. Pick to light systems are often incorporated into a pick module carton flow system to generate pick rates in excess of 300 picks per man hour, more than triple static storage pick rates.

In 1994, UNEX introduced Span-Track, its' patented full width roller flow track system. Within three years Span-Track was the leading carton flow product in the market. This achievement was driven by performance - Span-Track delivers superior flow, flexibility and durability.

For dynamic storage systems "flow" is the key factor. For carton flow the criteria is "restart": ensuring all product in the lane moves forward when front product is picked. The more product contact to the carton flow surface the better the restart. Span-Track full width roller provides 400% more product contact than plastic wheel and 150% more product contact than wheel bed carton flow systems.

Span-Track's conveyor-like design delivers 50lbs. per linear foot capacity backed by our 7 year platinum warranty. Traditional plastic wheel carton flow systems provide 25lbs. per linear foot capacity and limited warranties.

Span-Track's drop-in in design fits any rack structure. Track nests between standard pallet rack beams, no specialized shelves required - easy to reconfigure and re-slot. Span-Track Installs in 1/3 time of traditional plastic wheel systems.

UNEX has developed an in-house software program to analyze an operations SKU’s.

SKUBE determines which SKU’s should be assigned to a shelf, carton flow or pallet position based on product movement. It also matches the carton flow track width to carton width and slots all the carton flow SKU’s.