Traditional wide aisle warehouses built in the early stage usually reserve 3.5 meters or even wider operation channels for matched counterbalance handling equipment, and the actual available storage area accounts for less than 60% of the total warehouse space in most cases. Many warehouse operators face the pressure of expanding storage volume as business grows, but are unwilling to bear the high cost and long downtime of large-scale civil reconstruction or new warehouse expansion. The application of lithium-ion reach trucks provides a more cost-effective incremental transformation idea for this type of stock warehouse.

In the actual application and promotion process, the first step is to conduct a full survey of the existing warehouse operation data, including the size of standard cargo units, the maximum load of existing shelves, the maximum required lifting height of goods, the daily average handling frequency and the reserved passage space. The lithium-ion reach truck with matching parameters will have a smaller turning radius than the traditional counterbalance equipment, and no extra space is reserved for counterweight steering, which can safely reduce the original 3.5-meter wide operation channel to about 2.2 meters after reasonable planning. The extra space saved from the narrowed channel can be transformed into new pallet storage positions directly, without adjusting the position of the original shelves.

Different from the lead-acid handling equipment used in the past, the lithium-ion power system of the reach truck supports fast charging and opportunistic charging mode, which does not need to set up a special independent battery replacement and maintenance area. The original 10 to 20 square meters of special battery storage area can also be converted into temporary stocking positions or spare storage positions, further releasing the space potential of the existing warehouse. In the daily operation process, the lithium-ion reach truck has no exhaust emission, low noise during operation, and will not cause additional damage to the existing warehouse ground, no extra ground hardening treatment is needed in the transformation process.

From the actual operation data of a number of renovated projects, under the premise of not changing the main structure of the original warehouse and not replacing the original shelves, the overall effective storage capacity of the warehouse can be increased by about 30% only by introducing suitable lithium-ion reach trucks and re-planning the operation channel layout. The whole transformation process can be completed within 3 to 5 days without affecting the normal operation of the warehouse for a long time, which is a highly feasible capacity upgrading scheme for most traditional wide aisle stock warehouses.