Questions we actually get · Business and large sites
How do we get usable camera footage in a warehouse with high racking, narrow aisles and a layout that keeps changing?
Not by filming everything from the roof. A roof camera gives you an overview, but between high racking you mostly look down on pallets. We follow the route your goods take: goods-in, the aisles, pick zones, packing and the docks. That's where the cameras go, at the height and angle that match what you'll want to look back at.
We get this question a lot
How a customer put it
Our warehouse has high pallet racking, forklifts on the move all day and separate zones for storage, order picking and packing. The cameras on the roof give us an overview, but down on the floor people and goods regularly disappear behind racks or pallets. On top of that, the layout changes whenever we take on new clients or product lines.
Could you design something that takes account of sight lines at different heights and of how work actually moves through the building? We'd like to decide together which events we need to be able to piece back together afterwards. And how do we avoid footage that looks complete, yet still doesn't tell us enough when there's damage, missing stock or an incident?
A composite example drawn from several enquiries, not a message from one customer.
Picture a warehouse with high pallet racking, forklifts everywhere and separate zones for storage, order picking and packing. The roof cameras show the whole floor, but people and goods vanish behind the racks. And the layout shifts with every new client or product line.
The question behind it is nearly always the same. What should we have seen when that pallet got damaged, and why can’t we see it now?
This is a composite example, put together from several enquiries. It isn't a message from one customer.
I put the floor plan on the table, and my first question is what went wrong last time. And what you wanted to see at that moment. A camera high up in the roof tells you that something is happening. The person moving a box between two racks? You’ll get a lovely view of the top of his head.
Look down the aisle, not across it
Say a damaged pallet comes out of one of the aisles. You want to know which aisle, who was driving and when. For that you need a camera at the head of the aisle, looking all the way down it. A camera that looks across the aisle gives you a few metres of racking and not much else.
Two ways to do it, usually a mix
Option A: cameras at the ends of the aisles and where one zone meets the next, so you can follow a pallet from goods-in all the way to the dock. Option B: an overview from above, plus cameras where the handling happens, like the pick and packing tables. Most warehouses end up with a bit of both.
Racking moves
Count on the layout changing. That’s why we leave some slack in the cables, and why I’d check what each camera sees after every reshuffle. My next step is a walk round the warehouse with someone from the floor. They know where the trouble spots are. We can do that walk in English, by the way. Our engineers and our office team speak Dutch and English.
Brand and cabling
Here I like to use Dahua, choosing the model per zone: one type for overview, another for detail. With lots of cameras and several people watching, Nx Witness keeps it manageable. Every camera runs on a network cable. No exceptions.
Mount an aisle camera at the end of the racking, high enough that a forklift won't clip it. Then the whole aisle is in view, and you'll see what happens even when it's stacked to the top.
Three more questions we get about this
Is a camera on the roof enough?
For an overview, yes. For seeing what someone actually did, usually not. From up there you mostly see the tops of pallets. That's why we also put cameras at the ends of the aisles and in the zones where people work.
What if the racking moves?
It will, so we leave slack in the cables. After every reshuffle, check the image from each camera so you know what's still covered.
How do we start?
With a no-obligation advice call. Bring a floor plan of the warehouse and tell us what you wish you could have looked back at last time.
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Got a floor plan of your warehouse?
Book a no-obligation advice call and bring the drawing. We'll walk the route your goods take and tell you where a camera earns its place, and why.
No obligation. Afterwards you'll get a proposal that sets out how we'd go about it.