Facility upgrades are essential for enhancing value and productivity while ensuring the evolving needs of the occupants are fully met to support their daily operations. From energy-efficient upgrades to AI-driven tools, there are numerous ways to boost a facility’s practical worth and elevate its appeal and overall functionality.
Here, electric forklift specialists, iLift, are highlighting the top 5 futuristic facility upgrades that can transform any warehouse and make it fully equipped for tomorrow’s challenges.
Effective Energy-Saving Upgrades
Businesses across multiple industries are under increasing pressure to minimise their environmental impact and reduce their carbon footprint.
Energy-saving solutions such as LED lighting, and next-generation heating, ventilation, and air conditioning powered by smart technology can lower energy consumption and also reduce operating costs. The adoption of lithium-powered equipment like electric forklifts can also increase the efficiency, usability, and efficiency of standard workplace appliances.
Similarly, futuristic facility upgrades may also include green roofs that encourage wildlife, rainwater harvesting solutions that reduce water use, and electricity and heating sustainably powered by solar panels.
Facility Space Optimisation
Harnessing every inch of available space can deliver significant benefits for modern facilities across a variety of industries.
This is especially true in warehouses and large storage units where it is vital to get maximum use out of the space to improve efficiency and increase output. This often means taller and narrower storage aisles that can still be accessed using modern equipment such as electric reach forklift trucks and narrow aisle forklifts that can squeeze into the smallest spaces.
Companies are also embracing futuristic facility upgrades by adopting flexible floor plans and multifunctional areas that accommodate the varying needs of the business. These could include modular, sustainably built or recycled furniture that make the most of the workspace area in an environmentally friendly way.
3D Printing
Few technologies have the exciting potential to transform manufacturing and other industries like 3D printing. It works by constructing a three-dimensional object from a digital 3D model under computer control, with materials added and joined together bit by bit.
Think of a world where a facility’s entire manufacturing assembly line is replaced with 3D printers. Or where tomorrow’s factories use 3D printers to create replacement parts for machines in a matter of minutes, and keep the production process flowing, reduce downtime, and improve efficiency.
3D printers are used extensively in the engineering industry where they create prototypes and lightweight structures. But they also have the potential to print human tissue for transplants, to print food to feed those facing starvation, and even print houses out of concrete!
Artificial Intelligence
Many industries are entering a new frontier with Artificial Intelligence (AI) at the forefront. For instance, AI is transforming the construction industry and playing a key role in facility design by driving advances in techniques and technology.
In the pre-design stage, AI can harness feasibility studies to determine if a project is viable and profitable. Not only that, but AI can learn from past data to accurately predict a project’s environmental impact. When a project reaches the design development stage, AI is an effective tool for improving the efficiency and quality of the process from the original concept through to the buildable design.
You’ll also find AI is transforming other areas of facility design by using data to predict when equipment should be maintained or replaced and using cameras and sensors to check for safety hazards and monitor the quality of construction work.
Smart Buildings
The integration of technology is a key element in creating smart buildings and achieving futuristic facility upgrades.
This can involve everything from IoT sensors that detect, sense, and measure elements of the environment like temperature and motion, to building complex automation systems that deliver greater efficiency and security and improve user experience.
Smart buildings are all-encompassing solutions that are becoming increasingly popular in commercial complexes where a need exists for the centralised control of everything from the water and electricity supply to parking facilities and waste management.
From energy-saving workplace solutions to smart buildings and optimised storage units, there are many ways to achieve cutting edge facility upgrades that can improve productivity and efficiency across a vast number of industries.
