Acer, a leading global manufacturer of computer systems that includes the brands Acer, Gateway, Packard Bell and eMachines among its product portfolio, has taken delivery of a fleet of three Narrow Aisle Flexi articulated forklift trucks at its recently opened distribution centre in Poland.

The 215,0000 sq ft facility in Wroclaw, south western Poland, is part of Acer's international spare parts distribution network and also provides light manufacturing services to Acer's customers throughout Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Acer chose the Flexi trucks after an extensive evaluation process that involved an assessment of alternative spare parts picking strategies, benchmarking existing operations and field trials of various different truck types working in buildings of varying heights with differing storage densities.

The configuration chosen operates with conventional 'low cost' pallet racking with steel decks to store EURO pallets and plastic tote boxes.

All the aisleways are set at 2 metres wide and can be served by Flexi EURO articulated trucks handling 1.2 metre deep pallets.

Order assembly takes place at both ground level and higher in the storage cube, with high volume, frequently picked parts stored and picked at ground level locations and slower moving lines and high value parts held in the upper levels of the system.

The new centre opened on time and below budget costs and, since going live, Acer has met its planned operational throughput targets.

John Maguire, sales and marketing director of Narrow Aisle FLEXI comments: comments: "Acer is one of a growing number of blue chip international companies in mainland Europe to have realised the advantages that articulated trucks offer over traditional reach trucks or guided man-up VNA machines when planning cost effective, efficient customer order picking operations."