30-year old cabinets reused in Osram Sylvania’s mezzanine storage revamp

Hillsboro, N.H., is home to the automotive lighting division of Osram Sylvania, the world’s largest provider of automotive light sources. When considering new manufacturing equipment for its 250,000-square-foot manufacturing facility, the company halved the stockroom footprint while increasing capacity.

The project involved acquiring space from the tool and spare parts stockroom to accommodate the manufacturing department. The size of the stockroom would be reduced to 1,500 square feet—less than half the original size.

“The number of items stored in the stockroom would not be reduced,” says Paul Belliveau, spare parts stockroom manager. “On the contrary, due to the increase in manufacturing, additional items were to be stored. We sought a storage solution that would house more items in less space.”

Osram had been storing approximately half of its parts inventory—specifically the fastest-moving parts—in existing cabinets. The remaining half was kept in a mix of commercial shelves, racks, pegboards, and even on the floor. To consolidate their expanded parts storage, Osram took full advantage of the facility’s ceiling height by building a custom mezzanine system comprised of modular drawer storage and shelf cabinets (Lista International, listaintl.com).

OSRAM recycled its older drawer cabinets and shelf cabinets and transferred them to the second level of the mezzanine system. To avoid downtime, Lista retrofitted the new first-level cabinet housings with fully loaded drawers from the original cabinets, resulting in major cost-savings.

“Recycling the old cabinets was a tremendous cost and time savings for us,” Belliveau says. “The solution not only compensates for the loss of floor space in the stockroom, but also allows us to utilize the cabinets we already had.”