Since its infancy in the early 1990s, the e-commerce industry has revolutionized the retail and business landscapes with forecasts that it will top $6.3 trillion by the end of 2024.
Enhancing Warehouse Safety and Efficiency: The Role of Coatings Solutions in the Supply Chain Industry
Boxes in doorways, delivery trucks in our neighborhoods and new online companies selling everything from healthcare products to pet food are abundant. Today, e-commerce is integral to our daily lives.
Behind this boom is a robust physical infrastructure that supports it, including warehouse and fulfillment centers. According to CBRE Research, every billion in e-commerce sales generates demand for an additional 1.25 million square feet of new warehouse space.
But building new facilities comes at a premium cost. Companies are making changes within their existing facilities to accommodate more SKUs, higher volumes, more staffing and quicker turnaround times.
Newer, more flexible shelving and racking systems adjust to changing storage needs and help to meet modern logistics demands, including vertical lift systems that accommodate larger inventories without expanding square footage.
These systems, along with other warehouse equipment and machinery, must withstand the rigors of fast-paced operations that move tens of thousands of products each day.
Aside from quality construction, industrial coatings are central to their durability and longevity by keeping them structurally sound and protected against corrosion, oxidation and abrasion that are common challenges in fast-paced warehouse settings.
PPG makes coatings for material handling environments in a diverse range of resin chemistries, including epoxies, polyesters, urethanes, and acrylics, as well as hybrid coatings that combine multiple resin chemistries. Each of these options has its own strengths and weaknesses.
- Epoxies: These coatings excel in chemical resistance and mechanical properties. However, they may fall short in terms of UV resistance and weatherability.
- Polyesters: Known for exceptional weathering characteristics, polyesters offer great physical properties.
- Urethanes: Urethane coatings provide chip, scuff, and mar resistance.
- Acrylics: Acrylic coatings stand out with outstanding surface appearance.
These solutions not only preserve assets that are critical to the e-commerce supply chain, but are also instrumental in protecting the health and safety of workers at every point along the way.
Coatings Solutions Enhance Warehouse Safety
Increasingly, manufacturers are adopting powder coatings as their finishing technology of choice due to several advantages like sustainability, durability and aesthetics. Newer powder coatings developed within the last years have taken these benefits, including safety-enhancing features, to the next level.
Shelving and racking are notoriously hard to coat due to corners, intricate shapes and recessed areas. Launched in 2019, patent-pending PPG ENVIROCRON® EXTREME PROTECTION EDGE powder coatings were specially formulated to cover sharp edges and angles in a single coat without the need for mechanical edge rounding. While this coverage offers better corrosion protection along vulnerable areas, smoother edges also make products safer for handling.
Poor visibility at night or in low-light conditions poses a hazard in warehouses and fulfillment facilities and on the road. Retroreflective products like pavement markings, signs and safety vests return maximum light back to their closest light sources (unlike reflective products that return light in scattered, diffused patterns), improving how quickly and easily an object can be spotted ahead.
Patent-pending Envirocron LUM Retroreflective powder offers the safety-enhancing features of retroreflection, plus the performance and sustainability advantages of powder coatings, including strong resistance to corrosion, chipping and abrasions and a reclaimable, solvent-free formulation. It is the industry’s first commercially available retroreflective powder.
With the acceleration of e-commerce and interest in sustainability converging, an increasing number of delivery vehicles leaving warehouse, distribution and fulfillment centers are battery-powered as more companies are partnering with EV manufacturers to electrify their fleets.
While these steps help to reduce the impact on the environment, there are challenges in EV battery design, lifetime performance and safety. PPG developed Envirocron Extreme Protection Dielectric powder coatings to improve EV battery safety and keep EV operators safe on the roadways by isolating components in the battery pack to prevent shorting, arcing and maintain safe operating voltage; maintain a safe operating temperature window; and protection from fires from thermal runaway and external sources.
The Envirocron family of powder coatings deliver a durable, uniform finish that combines great aesthetics with exceptional protection and are specially formulated without volatile organic compounds (VOCs). They are the first coatings choice of many leading OEMs, manufacturers and applicators.
The role of powder colors
Color may not be the first thing that comes to mind in the e-commerce supply chain but it plays an important role in improving productivity, efficiency and worker safety in warehouse and fulfillment centers.
Operations that leverage color-coded shelving units organized by product categories, like perishable, electronic and hazardous materials, can help to reduce picking and packaging errors, accelerate retrieval and enhance safety with colors that designate hazardous materials. These strategies can deliver significant productivity and workplace safety gains.
While liquid coatings are generally known for more extensive color availability, PPG offers one of the industry’s largest libraries of colors, texture and special effect finishes in powder formulations.
Plus, expert color matching and custom color capabilities help to ensure that every warehouse and fulfillment center has precision colors in Pantone, RAL and other systems to match any in-house standards.
PPG works with leading shelving and racking manufacturers to help build optimal paint specifications to ensure that their assets are protected with the right coatings and in the right colors that deliver maximum performance, longevity and safety.