EFFICIENT UNIT LOADS - ECR Community

Figure 25: Example of a roll cage
Source: A.T. Kearney, Efficient Unit Loads project
7.3. Roll Cages and Dollies
Roll cages are used extensively in many parts of Europe
to carry assortments of secondary items from retailers’
RDCs to stores.
The resulting benefits explain their extensive use.
However, they also have major disadvantages.
Since fleets of roll cages are usually owned (or
operated) by individual retailers, mostly in captive
systems, there are no standard footprint or height
dimensions and their designs differ radically. Also, an
individual retailer may operate several different roll
cage variants, sometimes compatible, and often
intentionally incompatible, to help sorting and return
to the correct re-use location. For this reason, no
specific guidelines on roll cage dimensions have been
provided.
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Advantages of roll cages compared to pallets
• Sides contain the load, so it is less important that the
assortment is incompatible for stacking
• They can be as high as vehicle, doorway, or ergonomic
constraints allow, giving potential for better vehicle
and warehouse space utilisation
• When wheeled, they permit faster loading and
unloading of vehicles, and avoid the need for forklift
trucks in stores
• Shrink-wrap or glue are not required to stabilise their
load
• They can be designed to provide some product
security
• Optimum loading method is through end doors from a
dock, which is fully consistent with maintenance of
temperature regimes, whilst pallets are best sideloaded
for speed
• Roll cages are fully consistent with replenishment
straight to store shelf, without handling in the back
room, resulting in significant in-store productivity
benefits.
Disadvantages of roll cages compared to pallets
• They are expensive, often ten times the cost of a pallet
• They can be damaged, are costly to repair, and
inspection to identify repair needs is expensive and
difficult
• They constitute a safety hazard to handling staff, and
to customers if allowed on shop floors during trading
• They soon look unattractive in appearance, and are
difficult to clean
• They occupy considerable space when empty (even
when ‘nested’ or stacked)
• There is a productivity loss in nesting or stacking them,
and in reassembling for re-use
• Their external dimensions are incompatible with the
600x400 master module, since their sides mean that
they can only be loaded three across in a standard
width European vehicle (the internal dimensions are
generally compatible with the 600x400 master module
only in that they are sized for modular secondary
packaging plus handling space)
• They cannot be placed in standard pallet racking
• They are noisy when in use, for example during
loading of empties at stores.
The Efficient Unit Loads Report