One of the more interesting shifts happening in manufacturing right now is how much pressure is being placed on Work-In-Process (WIP) storage. At Freespace Robotics, we have a solution....
For years, storage systems on the manufacturing floor were expected to do one thing, hold material until it was needed. Today, that is no longer enough.
Production environments are running more SKUs, more changeovers, smaller batch sizes, and tighter schedules than ever before. As a result, WIP storage now has to support kitting, sequencing, mixed container sizes, non-conveyable parts, and last-minute schedule changes, often within the same footprint that was designed years ago.
What I see in many facilities is that when storage cannot keep up with the variability of production, the gap gets filled with labor and floor inventory.
- Pallets staged in aisles
- Overflow racks near the line
- Manual kitting tables
- Extra buffer stock “just in case”
It works, but it slowly reduces the efficiency the rest of the automation was supposed to create.
The more advanced manufacturing operations are starting to rethink this and treat WIP storage as an active part of the production system rather than a passive one. That means storage that can handle different container sizes in the same structure, reposition material quickly when schedules change, support kitting without separate processes, and make items stored deep in the system immediately available when needed.
This is one of the areas where we’ve been focusing with Freespace Robotics, designing storage that can adapt to the variability of modern manufacturing instead of forcing manufacturing to adapt to the storage. As production becomes more dynamic, the systems supporting the floor have to become just as dynamic.
Curious what others are seeing in their facilities are WIP storage constraints becoming more of a bottleneck than they used to be?
Visit us at MODEX2026 - Booth C15367