From its facility in Fort Worth, Texas, TTI, Inc., serves its global customers as a distributor of electronic capacitors and resistors. Growth in demand for these electronic components dictated that TTI improve its handling methods.

Company executives placed a high priority on efficient floor planning in this expansion. Installing spiral elevator conveyors gave TTI a materials handling method that conserves floor space, while still accommodating the order selection process.

TTI's associates hand-pick orders of electronic capacitors and resistors from different levels of multiple storage racks. Product sizes range from small envelopes to medium-sized boxes and tape reels. Orderpickers use individual mobile man-lifts to gather items from storage racks six levels high.

With six spiral elevator conveyors now installed in the distribution facility, productivity is high in moving picked orders. An orderpicker, for example, can drive his or her man-lift directly from the fifth level of a storage rack to one of the spiral conveyors and then load the completed order onto the conveyor's surface. That order then goes down the spiral conveyor to a point where it is discharged onto a collection belt conveyor. Finally, the order is conveyed to sortation.