The doors of your warehouse or distribution center are vital linkages between your facility and the rest of the supply chain. These doors should be correctly chosen, professionally installed and actively maintained to keep efficiency high and reduce incidences of avoidable accidents.
It's unfortunately common for buildings to not have adequate equipment, including industrial door systems, in place. This happens especially often when facilities were initially constructed for purposes such as retail and converted for warehouse use later in their life spans.
By inspecting your current warehouse door assets and determining which options are right for your organization, you can create an ideal environment for your workers, optimizing logistics efficiency and safety awareness.
Categories of warehouse door
Warehouse door systems encompass a number of different assets throughout a facility. Each of these deserve careful consideration and serve a unique purpose. The following are three of the most prominent categories of door to consider when assessing your current equipment's suitability and pondering upgrades.
Loading dock door
The loading dock plays a critical supply chain role, which means your doors for this area must deliver maximum reliability and minimal downtime. A single loading dock door breakdown could wipe out hours of productivity, costing your organization many thousands of dollars.
Loading dock doors should be paired with systems such as loading dock seals and loading dock shelters to prevent workers from being exposed to the elements during loading and unloading, and to ensure temperature control systems are functioning at full efficiency.
The loading dock is also a frequently overlooked area of security risk, so your loading dock door systems should deliver effective access control against intruders, while forming a reliable seal against animal pests.
High-speed door
The high-speed automatic doors within your facility serve an important role: dividing the various areas of the building while not impeding the quick movement of goods from one zone to another. Authorized personnel should be able to pass through the doors without delay, while their quick, automatic closing will assist with temperature management and access control.
There are multiple categories within the general area of high-speed doors, with some designed to be effective exterior doors, others offering thermal options for freezers and still more designed with break-away panels that ensure easy repairs if the door is struck by a forklift.
Other options include the number and size of transparent panels used in the doors. More and larger windows can help improve safety awareness, as personnel will be able to see who and what is on the other side of the door before passing through.
Overhead door
These sectional doors, which resemble commercial versions of standard garage doors, are ideal connectors between your facility and the outside world. They are available in various sizes and gauges of steel, and you can select an opening style that suits the physical layout of your space — on a curved track for lower ceilings or straight up and down in taller facilities.
Your overhead doors play an important role in your warehouse's presentation and appearance. To make your building look professional, you can select a color of paneling that aligns with your branding.
Other important options for overhead doors include your choice of opening mechanism. Doors that will have to open often can be equipped with automatic door openers, while a centralized control panel can give personnel an overview of all entrances.
Other door options
There are many specialized door types worth considering for specific purposes within your facility. These include:
- Freezer and cooler doors to maintain the cold chain and help comply with the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA)
- Fire doors that prevent the spread of fire through a building — these assets are important for safety awareness programs and can help your facility pass inspections
- Impact/swing doors that are designed to remain sealed when suffering a serious impact from a powered vehicle such as a forklift
Warehouse doors' role in safety awareness and efficiency
Your doors are important for creating a positive employee work environment and your supply chain operations moving at full speed.
Avoidable equipment failures may harm your employees severely. Even a single incident involving a commercial door can be very dangerous, considering the size of these assets. Correctly functioning doors are also necessary to segregate foot and vehicle traffic, minimizing chances of collisions. A door worn from age, use or neglect can pose added risk in this sense, meaning inspections, proactive maintenance and repair are essential considerations.
Even in cases when no one is hurt, downtime still stops your company from moving at full speed. Goods may be stuck in trucks or the facility due to a door failure. In cases where you must maintain a strict cold chain, this may even result in spoilage and FSMA compliance issues. Furthermore, ineffective doors that let temperature controlled air escape are a liability for energy efficiency, forcing your air conditioning systems to work harder.
Warehouse door services provided by MINER
Considering warehouse doors' important role in both safety awareness and efficiency optimization, it pays to have the right facility partner on your side when setting up and maintaining your equipment.
MINER can provide support tailored to your needs, at any or all steps from initial asset selection to long-term maintenance and total cost of ownership optimization.
Purchase and installation
When selecting a warehouse door asset, for any area of your facility, you should have access to equipment from top manufacturers and the input of expert consultants who understand your business. MINER delivers on both counts, through relationships with the best vendors nationwide and an experienced staff ready to help.
After assisting with your purchase, MINER can also help install the assets. Installation carried out by trained technicians ensures that your doors are ideally set up to keep functioning effectively for millions of cycles in the years to come.
Proactive maintenance
An ideal proactive maintenance strategy, created in partnership with MINER, is designed around frequently updated inspections that take the suitability, age and wear of every asset into account. Through attentive, strategic care that doesn't wait for assets to fail, you can optimize usable life span and total cost of ownership.
While proactive maintenance is intended to minimize avoidable failures, sometimes emergency repair services are necessary. MINER can provide this type of assistance as well, dispatching trained technicians who carry essential tools and materials with them and can get your facility moving again following downtime.
If you haven't yet checked your current warehouse door assets for their suitability for purpose, age and level of wear, this is an important step in taking action to improve this equipment.
Request a quote today to find out the ideal approach for addressing your warehouse door needs.
