Industrial storage systems are great, because the designer needn't concern themselves with aesthetics, color trends or marketing whims. It's all about hardcore functionality. In this series I'll show you some simple but intelligent design solutions from Akro-Mils, an Ohio-based manufacturer of "material handling & productivity solutions" goods. Since 1947 they've been using plastic and metal to create things that help people store things in a better way.

These Indicator Bins might not look like much at first glance, but this is Design 101: Use an object's physicality and color to solve a problem. In this case the problem is inventory management in a high-speed environment. Picture a factory or a mail-order business where a feeder must provide a variety of parts to an assembly line or packager. It's the first person's job to get the right parts to the second person, and it's a manager's job to ensure stock levels are maintained so that the workflow doesn't break down.

Roughly the front 4/5ths of the Indicator Bins are dark blue, whereas the rear 1/5th is bright orange and divided from the rest of the compartment.

When the feeder exhausts all of the parts in the blue area and hits the divider, they pull the bin out and turn it around to access the small reserve of parts in the rear.

This simple act means they don't have to interrupt their workflow to call a manager over or annotate what parts are running low. The manager can do a quick visual sweep of the facilities to see where restocking needs to occur.

Simple, smart, and a great use of color.

Akro-Mils Industrial Storage Solutions:
» Part 1: Indicator Bins
» Part 2: The Shelf-Less ReadySpace
» Part 3: The Double-Duty ProCart