This converter was about to break ground on a 5,000 sq ft warehouse expansion to handle inventory growth. The cost estimate was $600,000 plus construction time. Their VP of operations called us first.
The walk-through
Their existing storage was static rack shelving with wide aisles, organized by historical convention rather than current workflow. Sleeves were stored horizontally on poles. Floor staging had crept in around the edges. Plates were in a separate room behind the prepress area.
We measured their actual inventory and ran the density math. The conclusion: a properly configured mobile storage system would hold their entire current inventory plus 5 years of growth in 60% of the existing footprint.
The math
- Existing storage footprint: 2,800 sq ft
- Required footprint with mobile system: 1,600 sq ft
- Reclaimed: 1,200 sq ft
- Cost of mobile system: $145,000
- Avoided cost of warehouse expansion: $600,000
The result
They canceled the expansion. The reclaimed 1,200 sq ft became QA and packaging staging — solving a separate bottleneck they had been ignoring. The mounting room project paid for itself before the avoided expansion savings even entered the conversation.
The lesson
Before you build, measure. Most mounting rooms have 30–50% reclaimable floor space hiding in plain sight.
The Flexopodz Team
Purpose-built mounting room solutions for flexographic printing.