These are the modern-day pre-engineered warehouses, termed as Rack Supported Warehouses. When racks are erected first and then wrapped with skin, the resulting structure is called a rack supported warehouse. In these structures, the racking system serves as the primary structural support. Unlike conventional warehouses, there are no traditional structural columns—walls and roofs are fixed directly onto the rack structure. This inside-out approach offers several advantages over conventional warehouses that require a separate building before racks can be installed.

The erection and commissioning of a rack supported warehouse are significantly faster since no separate columns are required. Also known as Rack Clad Warehouses, these allow the installation of racking, material handling equipment, and cladding to happen simultaneously, making them more cost-effective compared to conventional warehouses with similar storage  capacity.

Equally important, a rack supported warehouse provides the maximum use of the available space for storage. The storage height in the rack supported warehouse can be extended to an extent of 44 mts mainly because of the way it is constructed; this surpasses the height limitation of a conventional warehouse. Hence you can pack more into every cubic metre. The rack supported warehouse are commonly deployed in places with high real estate cost or where space is hard to come by, it is a definite plus. Being column free, companies can also make the most of the available foot print. A rack supported warehouse has a far the higher storage density than any traditionally built warehouse.

One of the most important constraints is the safety, as a very common question can be how safe is the rack supported warehouse.
As in case of any fabricated structures, properly designed and built, a rack supported warehouse is able to withstand day-to-day stresses from the operation as well as external forces. Rack supported warehouse is even preferred and recommended for geographical locations where there is high wind, snow load, and seismic activity, as the forces are spread across multiple supporting posts. The fabricated structure of rack supported warehouse has been designed to meet the most extreme of mother nature’s forces—typhoon force winds up to 220 kmph or seismic conditions up to UBC4.

Rack supported warehouses are particularly suited for high volume distribution centres (DCs), third party logistics operators (3PLs) and Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) companies where there is a need to optimise storage density (storage per m³). Equipped with an automated storage and retrieval system (AS/RS), which uses a robotically guided crane together with in and out bound conveyors, the facilities can operate 24/7 with minimal human oversight. For operations where speed is the essence, these facilities can process high volumes of orders, quickly and accurately, with minimal shipping errors.

Are there any drawbacks in having such a warehouse? The most obvious is adaptability. Unlike a conventional warehouse which can be re-configured or put to alternative use, there is no second life for a rack supported warehouse. It can only be used for the purpose for which it was designed.

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