Workspace Design - Millennium Storage and Interiors Blog | Millennium Storage and Interiors

Tag: Workspace Design (page 2 of 3)

What You Need to Create A Healthy Office

If you own a business, you and your staff are going to be spending a large proportion of your waking lives working in the same office space. This makes it vitally important that you ensure that the environment is as healthy as possible to keep everyone motivated and productive. Here’s how to achieve a healthy office…

One of the first places to start in creating a healthy office environment is lighting. Too much artificial light is not good for the eyes and old outdated lighting can not only be inefficient but also add additional problems for employees already staring at laptop and computer screens. Where possible offices should make the most of any natural light available.

The second and most troublesome area is temperature control. It can be difficult to regulate temperature to everyone’s liking in a large office as there will inevitably be cold spots and warm spots. Spending extra on better air conditioning systems can make a major difference all year round.

When these basic areas are taken care attention can then be focused on areas such as providing easy access to drinking water and even exercise spaces for more progressive offices.

There Is More Than One Type Of Office Partition

September 26, 2018 / admin / 0 Comments

Office partitions allow you make the most of your office space as well as reorganise and create new workspaces. It is, however, essential to consider which office partition will work best in your particular environment. Here are some of the merits of each type…

Solid Partitions
As the name suggests these are more permanent partitions. These are most suited to office spaces where confidentiality is important. Solid partitions can always be mixed and matched with glass partitions to brighten things up.

Glass Partitions
Glass partitions are great for smaller offices where you want clutter kept to a minimum. They also create brighter more collaborative workspaces which tend to keep staff happier in comparison to solid walls which can create unnecessary barriers in some offices.

Demountable Partitions
These are highly flexible and easy to move around if your office space is more fluid. With many old town centre buildings being transformed into enterprise hubs and business incubators, demountable partitions can provide a way to create separation between work spaces and allow plenty of scope to change layouts at the same time.

For more information or guidance on installing office partitions give us a call today or look through the range of services we provide.

3 Ways To Make Workspace A Happier Place

September 10, 2018 / admin / 0 Comments

Returning to work after the summer holidays can be a depressing experience for some people. You get used to all that sunshine and miss all that relaxation. Going back to work needn’t be stress however and there is a lot you can do to cheer up your work environment…

Add some greenery
Office plants are all the rage as people like to see a bit of nature in their workspace. Being amongst plants and trees is supposed to be good for us and it’s easy to bring a bit of that into the office with a few potted plants.

Get a personalised mug
Personalised mugs are great for adding personality and humour to your tea or coffee times. You can have your mugs personalised to your personality so nobody is left in doubt over who it belongs to. They also look a lot nicer on your desk than a plain old mug.

Tidy up those cables
Cables can take up a lot of space unnecessarily. You can banish this issue by purchasing some cable organisers so that they can all be tied up and stored out of sight. You could even invest in a new desk which has holes in giving the cables somewhere to go. So many desks don’t actually have this simple method of keeping cables out of sight.

When To Use Cantilever Racking

January 20, 2018 / admin / 0 Comments

Cantilever racking is a type of storage system which is used for all sorts of purposes and typically appears in builder’s merchant yards and factories. Like any racking system, cantilever racking is very versatile as well as being strong.

Cantilever racking is at its most useful when used to store longer lengths of materials and items, which typically consist of sheets of wood, steel, tubes, pipes and so on. A cantilever system can also be used to effectively store odd shaped items which might otherwise take up a lot of space in a warehouse or other storage facility.

The typical cantilever systems we see in use today are used to store items that can be up to 10 metres long and up to a 30,000kg in weight. The arms used are usually around 2 ½ metres with adjustment possible depending on the size of materials stored.

The other great thing about using cantilever lever racking is the ability to add to it over time as storage requirements increase. You can simple add to the bays as time goes on to massively increase your storage capacity.

Cantilever racking can be used indoors and outdoors (as long as it is galvanised). Please get in touch if you would like to know about the racking systems we have available.

Is Your Warehouse Ready For Black Friday?

October 20, 2017 / admin / 0 Comments

This November is likely to be a record breaking month for mobile smartphone shopping with 10bn predicted to be spent this year. Meanwhile overall spending across all devices is predicted to top 20bn.

The behaviour of online consumers in recent years has been shaped by Black Friday, an event imported from the United States where retailers offer large discounts on their items. Unlike the high street where peak times tend to be the run up to Christmas and the January Sales people are understandably keen to purchase presents online in November to take advantage of low prices.

All this extra spending on online purchases will certainly increase the demand for storage and distribution facilities and bring added pressure to capacities. So how can you adapt your warehouse space to this demand?

Fortunately, there are several ways including the introduction of mezzanine floors to maximise unused headroom. Investing in additional racking and shelving will also help increase storage space significantly. Investing in double racking for example will mean pallets can be stored two deep.

If space is restricted then you could consider reducing the number of access aisles to further increase pallet storage capacity.

Why You Need Warehouse Crash Barriers

September 30, 2017 / admin / 0 Comments

Warehouses can be dangerous places for staff when fork trucks are constantly moving around and racks are stacked high with various goods. This is where crash barriers act as an important safety feature.

The number of injuries in the transport and storage industry numbers approximately 2,500 every year. Each one of these incidents will not only result in injuries and even fatalities in some cases but also damage to goods and time off work for those with seriously injured.

Crash barriers then are an essential feature all warehouse designs should incorporate along with layouts that help minimise the potential for accidents to occur in the first place.

Warehouse barriers should be designed to serve a number of functions in addition to protecting workers. Barriers will minimise damage to racking which can be expensive to replace and reduce the impact of collisions with moving objects such as forklift trucks.

Warehouse crash barriers do this by spreading and absorbing the force of impact, which dramatically reduces the injuries likely to be sustained. They also act as a means to slow down vehicles during collisions.

If you require more information about installing racking and safety features in your warehouse, give us a call.

How To Make Pallet Storage In Industrial Warehouses More Efficient

February 20, 2017 / admin / 0 Comments

One of the first things to do when you have identified a warehouse suitable for your storage needs is to assess how that space is used for optimum efficiency.

To do this you will need a storage professional to help you not only help plan how the space will be used but also increase the profitability of your warehouse. Of course a lot about planning your space will depend on the kinds of products you will be storing and how much traffic is likely to be entering and exiting the building.

When it comes to the pallets themselves there are three important areas to keep think about:

The size of products
The ideal use of space is to store your products according to their common sizes although this may not always be possible. The focus either way should be to keep the fastest moving products nearest the exit door so that productivity can be maximised.

The number of pallets
When calculating how many pallets you need to fill the available rack space you should also allow for growth in stock levels over time.

The size of your pallets
It is important to allow some clearance around your pallets rather than have them tightly packed together. A forklift truck should have enough room to pick a pallet out of each slot without risking damage to surrounding products.

There are of course plenty of other factors to consider including the rent per sq ft and so on but the above should help get you started. If you need more information please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Will We See A Revolution Workplace Design In 2017?

January 21, 2017 / admin / 0 Comments

2016 proved to be a quite a year and in the future historians will probably look on it as a key turning point in the history of the world but what can we expect in 2017? Will change be coming to the workplace environment or has change already been happening before our eyes even if we don’t really notice it?

With so-called millennials joining generation x in demanding more flexible workspaces that help provide a better work life balance changes have already been taking place. These have been led by leading tech companies in the US where corporate spaces have been transformed from traditional office layouts with a room for the boss and a boardroom to modular open plan collaborative workspaces that incorporate areas for entertainment, refreshment and so on.

Greater awareness of health issues in the workplace have also seen more notice taken of ergonomics. Business owners have realised that healthy workplaces make for happier more productive staff.

In 2017 the biggest thing we can expect is more of the same. With technology moving forward at a rapid rate and remote working now far easier than it ever was in the past, many offices have now become little more than meet-up spaces. Ironically the great technological advances we have witnessed in the offices has actually inspired and will continue to inspire a more human centred approach to workplace design.

Internet Shopping Drives Demand for Warehouse Space and Investment

November 20, 2016 / admin / 0 Comments

Fund managers are pouring money into warehouses around the world as the long-term fundamentals of the sector remain strong and set for future growth.
A recent deal involving Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund saw the purchase of a $2.4 billion portfolio of warehouses in Europe. Demand for warehousing has been largely driven by the growth in online retailing, which is revolutionising the way we shop and how businesses store their products.

Amazon, one of the trailblazers is already investing in more and more warehouses to help keep pace with customer demands for fast deliveries.

While one after another big high street retailers with long histories seem to be toppling, online shopping has gone from strength to strength and this will only increase demand for warehouses in the future.

Building a warehouse of course requires a lot of space, therefore unlike other commercial property sectors, warehouses can be more profitable than other asset classes because demand is kept high.

Returns from warehouses are said to be better than for office towers by almost one percent, though returns have diminished slightly as more investors have entered the sector in an attempt to find an alternative to bonds. Yields have fallen lower on bonds due to loose monetary policy in Europe and other parts of the world.

Aldi Puts Down Marker With Warehouse Plans

October 6, 2015 / admin / 0 Comments

Supermarket chain Aldi are looking increasingly like they want to take the UK’s biggest supermarkets. The budget supermarket has planned to open up 2.5 million sq ft of warehouse space to satisfy what it expects to be future demand.
Aldi’s warehouse expansion is going against the grain of current demand with only Asda looking seeking planning permission for a warehouse in 2014. The warehouse space they were planning was considerably less at 115,120 sq ft than that planned by Aldi.

According to Barbour ABI’s construction data, there have been planning applications for a 890,789 sq ft so far in 2015 with Aldi accounting for 645,835 sq ft of that total.

Competition seems to be heating up in the supermarket sector with consumers increasingly opting for what they perceive as good value. The big supermarkets are finding it hard to compete with the low prices offered by some of their smaller rivals.

All this of course is good news for consumers who will benefit from price wars between the supermarkets. Aldi’s decision to add more warehousing demonstrates a growing confidence in the future of its operations.
In contrast some of the bigger supermarkets are closing down their smaller stores and refocusing their efforts on competing with each other as well as smaller supermarkets chains such as Aldi and Lidl.