Pharmacy – The Need for High-Density Drug Storage
Today’s pharmacist and pharmacy requires ever increasing efficiency.
Drug storage for maximum capacity and retrieval is necessary for adequate inventory and to fill scripts. Your storage units or Rx bottle bay shelving comes in several styles and brands each designed for a particular way they can be used.
With pressure on maximizing space the ‘high-density’ bottle bay plays best to space and inventory.
High-density bottle bays can mean stocking as much as 28% more product in the same space over traditional bottle bays.- Lift-off Rx shelves add efficiency to the dispensing process too. Actually, there are three basic density levels: standard, medium and high density storage shelving.
- Standard density systems use full width shelves, typically 36”, 44” to 48” wide and 7.75”deep.
The longer the shelf the less flexible it becomes in handling inventory sizes especially height of pill bottles. There will usually be wasted space above shorter bottles than taller ones.
Rx Bay storage systems with shorter shelf widths from 24” to 32” are medium density systems. High density Rx storage systems have 16” wide shelves. 16” wide shelf systems allow for flexible shelving run lengths: 16”,32”,48”, 64” and 80” runs which typify most shelving run dimensions. Density is achieved when you can adjust the shelf every 16” horizontally and 1” up or down to accommodate pill bottle or package height. This reduces the wasted space between shelf levels that would be carrier over on a 36” or 48” width shelf.
The most popular high density 16” shelf systems are the Tubular and Flat Panel. Tubular systems use vertical slotted uprites set 16”on-center with 84” heights with shelves adjusting 1” vertically up or down. The Flat panel system uses no uprites and has panel widths of 16” to 48” wide and 84” high.
Flat panels allow shelves to move up and down in 1” increments and slide horizontally in any increment allowing overlap of shelves. Thus both systems greatly reduce unused space between shelves and increasing shelf system storage capacity.
Whether you are planning a new pharmacy, remodeling an existing pharmacy or just want to increase your drug storage capacity, consider the high-density Rx bottle bay systems available. Visit Midwest Retail Services to explore a wide array of pharmacy shelving solutions for your business.
If you have any additional tips for taking advantage of the space you have, please share them in the leave a reply section below!
