3X Warehouse Floor Space: How AGrack Transforms Glass Plant WIP Flow

Walk into any busy glass tempering plant and you’ll see the same problem: work-in-progress (WIP) glass sheets stacked haphazardly on the floor, taking up every inch of available space. Crews waste hours shuffling stacks to find the right sheet for the next production step, and the risk of scratches and breakage is constant. This floor-space bottleneck limits your production capacity far more than your actual equipment capability. It doesn’t have to be this way. Calculate Your Plant Capacity Gain

The WIP Bottleneck That Kills Glass Plant Productivity

Most glass processing plants rely on floor stacking for WIP sheets between production steps: cutting, edging, tempering, laminating, and final packaging. This outdated approach creates three critical problems that limit your output:

• Space Waste: Floor stacking uses only the ground level of your facility, wasting 75% or more of your available vertical warehouse space. As order volumes rise, you quickly run out of floor space, forcing you to either turn down work or pay for expensive additional warehouse space.
• Labor Waste: Crews spend 2-3 hours per shift shuffling stacks of glass to access sheets buried underneath. This non-value-added labor adds nothing to your product, but adds significantly to your per-unit labor costs.
• Damage Waste: Moving stacks of glass multiple times dramatically increases the risk of scratches, edge chips, and full breakage. Most plants report 1-2% of WIP material is scrapped due to handling damage, directly cutting into your margins.

These problems get exponentially worse as you add capacity and take on more custom, high-mix orders. The good news is that you don’t need to expand your facility to increase production capacity — you just need to optimize your WIP storage system.

AGrack WIP Storage System: Triple Your Effective Floor Space

The AGrack system transforms your WIP storage by utilizing vertical space while keeping every sheet immediately accessible, eliminating all three bottlenecks at once.

1. 3X More Storage Capacity in the Same Footprint

AGrack’s self-locking stacking design allows you to stack fully loaded racks 3 high, safely and securely. The weight of upper racks transfers entirely through the steel uprights, so your glass sheets never bear any compressive load. This means you can store 3 times as much WIP material in the exact same floor space, effectively tripling your available storage capacity without expanding your facility.

2. Zero Stack Shuffling, 2 Hours Per Shift Saved Per Crew

Every AGrack unit holds a single batch of glass that moves through production together. Since racks are stackable and accessible from both sides, you never have to shuffle stacks to find the material you need. Crews can pull the exact rack they need for the next production step in seconds, eliminating hours of non-value-added labor every shift. Most plants see a 20% increase in overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) within the first month of implementing AGrack for WIP storage.

3. 90% Reduction in WIP Handling Damage

Glass sheets loaded into AGrack units are moved only twice: once when they are loaded into the rack after cutting, and once when they are unloaded for final packaging. This eliminates all the intermediate shuffling and moving that causes most WIP damage. The mechanically locked EPDM rubber padding provides zero-scratch protection throughout the production process, reducing WIP scrap rates from 1-2% to less than 0.2%.

Seamless Integration with Your Existing Production Flow

AGrack units are designed to integrate seamlessly with standard glass production equipment:

• Perfect height for direct loading from glass cutting table outfeeds
• Compatible with both forklift and overhead crane handling for maximum flexibility
• Standard sizes fit all common glass sheet dimensions from 1600x900mm up to 2400x1800mm
• Same units work for both WIP storage and final shipping, eliminating double-handling when orders are ready to ship

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Will AGrack work with our existing overhead crane system?

Yes. All AGrack units come with integrated, weld-tested lifting lugs that are compatible with standard overhead crane hooks and vacuum lifter systems.

Q: How many glass sheets fit in each AGrack unit?

Capacity depends on glass thickness, but standard units hold 10-15 sheets of 6mm float glass, or 5-8 sheets of 12mm thick low-E glass.

Q: Can we color-code racks for different production steps or customer orders?

Absolutely. We offer custom powder coat color options to match your facility’s color coding system for order tracking and production flow management.

Q: What is the maximum safe stacking height for WIP storage?

For indoor WIP storage with standard 1500kg load units, we recommend a maximum of 3 high, which fits easily under standard 4m ceiling heights in most production facilities.