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Order pickers come in three basic flavours: for low, medium and high levels. Low-level units are broadly similar to powered pallet trucks but they are designed to give access to ground and second-level pallets. This is achieved by the operator stepping up on to a platform on top of the battery compartment, or by using a rising platform. They may also feature rising forks to keep the picking surface at an ergonomically acceptable height. Cost is in the 18,00o-ro,000 range. Medium-level units are designed to go up to picking heights of about 4m and cost D0,000-I2,500.
High-level order pickers can be used up to picking heights of about torn as standard, although some suppliers offer higher-level machines. Like VNA trucks, high-level order pickers typically have some kind of guidance. Cost is roughly fr8,000-3o,000, depending on spec.
By far the greatest numbers of order pickers sold are lowlevel variants for two good reasons. First, they are much less expensive pieces of kit than medium or high-level units; second, it makes operational sense to keep the product lines you will have to pick from
at the lowest level in the racking.
"It's good to hold those items in ground-level locations so you don't have to send an operator up at all," says sales and marketing director of Atlet, Paul Forster. "Always try lowlevel picking first. It'll be more efficient and cost-effective."
Picking rates with order pickers will vary tremendously, depending on the weight of item being picked, the height you're picking from and how far into the racking the operator has to reach to get to the product.
Like VNA trucks, order pickers can cope in aisles down to about 1,300mm, although ideally the higher the level of operation, the wider the aisle clearance should be. Typical load capacities will be up to 2.5 tonnes at low level and tonne above this. This is because low-level machines can be used to carry up to three unit loads, where higher-level units generally carry only a single load.
Forster says maximum travel speeds at ground level are about 12.5km/h for low-level order pickers and 8-rokmjh for medium and high-level units. But this may fall to as little as 2.5km/h with the operator elevated for safety reasons—safe braking is a particular issue—and in many cases, microprocessor control automatically decreases maximum speed according to operator height.
Some high-level VNA trucks, known as combination trucks, are suited to order picking as well as full pallet handling in and out of racking. Combis are generally based around a turret design and can lift pallets to about 14.m. Their dual functioning can, in the right operations, do away with the need for two separate trucks. However, at £50,0007o,000—substantially more than a high-level order picker—you wouldn't want to use it for too much order-picking work.