Incredibly, common warehousing systems utilize only about 40% of the total available space for storage of parts or goods, the rest is allocated for passageways. Piling up the boxes, bags or crates of the materials in their maximum heights does not improve much the use of space. This may be tolerable when there is not much materials to store, but when space is lacking, solutions have been ordinarily found through pallet racking or building storage mezzanines. Like the concept of high-rises that use up little ground space but a great deal of it upwards, vertical storage has been an adequate solution, at least until recently.

Movable storage. The twin dominant difficulties of storage management have always been storage area and materials access. Vertical storage uses the available space above ground level, mostly empty in most conventional warehousing ways. However, there remains the mostly unused ‘road system’ for getting to and retrieving materials, the passageways. The warehouse truck could only use its own space at any one time, so that the aisle spaces it is not on is wasted.

The mobile storage system pushes the shelving closer if the passageway between them is not being utilized so that the space is not wasted. The same racks are then pushed apart when needed to allow the forklift access to the materials. In this way the space between structures or shelves are used, granting as much as 100% extra storage space. The racks or shelves are moved either manually or with machine assistance.

Vertical carousels. Comparable in idea to the restaurant dumbwaiter or the Rolodex, vertical carousels create storage space by minimizing the need for mechanical carriers like a forklift. Because the materials are placed in bins, racks or shelves accessed by humans, the passageway space between the carousels may be lessened, opening up additional space for storage. One advantage of this system is that the materials are always accessed at the same height level, which can be a bonus for the retrieving persons. On the other hand, vertical carousels are mostly used for small-sized parts.

Automated self-storage. This system is run by computer and eliminates the need for human intervention, at least nearly all of the time. While the materials are stored in uniform-sized modules and stowed in racks and pallets, loading and retrieval is done by an robotic loading-retrieval forklift-like machine that brings the appropriate module to the person at the retrieval window. The same machine receives the modules from the loading door for storage. So in effect the machine is the storage helper with the human as the superior.

As space gets scarcer for storing materials in a manufacturing or selling business, the search for solutions goes on at an ever increasing rate. The first significant solution direction of vertical storage has been followed by mobile storage, both sideways and perpendicular, seemingly using up the options so that so far no new directions are readily foreseen. However, the search has not ended and undoubtedly we will know more later on, short of minimizing the materials themselves.

A fence is akin to a picture border: it limits but enriches the value of a property. A formal garden without a fence will seem like an aberration in a meadow; or, worse, an errant statement of a desirable life. A fence can restrict a vista, true, but it can likewise create a world in its precincts. Perchance a restricts world, but a private one created to your definitions and desires.