Alkon Tote Bins in India: AK-421, AK-422 and Partitions for Kitting, Picking and Moving Stock Between Stations
Fixed bins hold stock still, and totes move it. That difference sounds trivial until you design a floor around it: a fixed bin is sized to a part and mounted at an address, a tote is sized to a carrying job and travels from a store to a line, from a line to an inspection bench, or from a picking aisle to a packing table. Most plants and warehouses need both, and most buy the second kind by default from whatever the local market offers, which is how a stores team ends up with five sizes of crate that do not stack together, do not fit the trolley and have no place to put a label. The ALKON Tote Bin range is deliberately small. It has two bins, the AK-421 and the AK-422, one footprint at two heights, and a short list of partitions that divide them. This page explains what that gives you, how to do the capacity arithmetic honestly, where totes belong in a kitting, picking or maintenance routine and how to buy them as a set. Shreeram Metafusion Engineers Pvt. Ltd. operates storagebins.in from Shop-1, Gagangiri CHS, Sector 17, Vashi, Navi Mumbai, and has been an authorised stockist of ALKON Plastics Pvt. Ltd. for over thirty years, with a catalogue of 476-plus products behind the two totes described here.
What a tote is for, and what it is not
A tote is a container whose job is to carry. It does not live at a fixed shelf address for years, and its contents do not wait for a single picker to reach in from an aisle. Instead it gets filled in one place, moves, gets emptied in another place and goes back for the next load. This changes what you ask of it. A fixed bin needs an open front so that a hand can reach in; a tote needs an open top so that it can be filled and emptied quickly, and a rigid, stackable body so that it can be piled on a trolley without collapsing. A fixed bin needs a rear lip to hang on a panel; a tote needs a good grip, a stable base and a label that can be read from a metre or two away.
The ALKON Tote Bins are built around those requirements. They are moulded from polypropylene copolymer, with a stable, robust design, an anti-skid bottom, a large label holder and a smooth internal wall that wipes clean. They are stackable. They are described as compatible with shelving and vertical storage systems. And two optional types of partition let a single tote be divided into compartments when one part number per tote is not what the job needs.
What a tote is not is a bin for long-term storage of fine detail. If a stores team wants a hundred part numbers visible at a glance, a louvre panel with Supra or Hippo bins is the right solution. If it wants a reserve of bulky stock in a warehouse, a Mammoth bin is the right container. The tote sits between them, as the carrier of batches, kits and orders. Knowing which job each container does is the foundation of a clean layout.
The two sizes, and the arithmetic that sits behind them
The range has two bins, and they share a footprint of 400 x 255 mm outside, which keeps stacks stable and trolley layouts simple. The only difference is height.
Both have three slots for horizontal partitions or one slot for a vertical partition.
The inside dimensions give you the capacity. The AK-421's inside volume works out at about 7.6 litres to the brim, and the AK-422's at about 16 litres. These are brim figures, and the working capacity is smaller, because nobody fills a tote to the top, and because parts have their own shapes and do not fill space perfectly. A reasonable rule is to plan on around 70 to 80 per cent of the brim figure, then test with real parts. A tote of bolts will fill more efficiently than a tote of awkwardly shaped castings, and a tote of fragile items will be filled less to leave room for protection.
For parts that you already know the size of, do the fit test directly against the inside footprint of 365 x 230 mm. A component 380 mm long will not lie flat in the tote and will need to be stood up or put in a different container. A component 220 mm wide leaves only a few millimetres to spare and will be awkward to remove with a gloved hand. This kind of check, done on paper before ordering, saves a trolley's worth of totes that turn out not to fit.
- Tote Bin AK-421: 400 x 255 x 100 mm outside, 365 x 230 x 90 mm inside, effective height 90 mm, packed 10 per carton, with a carton volume of 0.1014 cubic metres.
- Tote Bin AK-422: 400 x 255 x 200 mm outside, 365 x 230 x 190 mm inside, effective height 190 mm, packed 5 per carton, with a carton volume of 0.1025 cubic metres.
Choosing between the shallow tote and the deep tote
The AK-421, at 90 mm effective height, is a shallow tote. The AK-422, at 190 mm, is roughly twice as deep. The choice depends on the parts, and getting it right makes picking noticeably faster.
Choose the shallow AK-421 when parts are small and flat, or when the picker needs to see everything in the tote. A layer of parts a few centimetres deep can be seen at a glance, and nothing is buried. Typical contents include fasteners, clips, gaskets, brackets, small electrical items, labels, packaged components and documents. A shallow tote also stacks lower, and a stack of five or six is easy to carry and to see over. It is also suitable for sub-assembly kits where each part is laid out in a compartment.
Choose the deeper AK-422 when parts are taller or when quantity matters more than visibility. Typical contents include bottles, small castings, tubes, bulky assemblies, packaged goods and a batch of identical parts. The deeper tote holds more, so fewer trips are needed, but it hides what is at the bottom, so partitions or a layered arrangement may be needed to keep control.
Many operations use both, assigning the shallow tote to kitting and picking and the deep tote to batch moves, which gives the floor a visual cue: shallow means kit or pick, deep means batch. Colour can reinforce this, since both are offered in red and blue. A common arrangement uses blue for routine material and red for the exceptions: rework, quarantine, urgent or customer returns. Whatever you choose, write it down, keep the number of meanings small and put the key on the wall.
Partitions: when one tote must hold several things
The tote's slots take horizontal or vertical partitions, which turn a single compartment into several. The partition range in the catalogue is short and clear.
Each partition is packed 20 to a carton, and the partitions are black, which gives a clear visual contrast against the red or blue of the tote.
The practical rule is that a tote has either up to three horizontal partitions or one vertical partition, so the number of compartments is limited. Three horizontal partitions divide the length into four, and one vertical partition divides the width into two. That is enough for most kitting needs, where a kit may contain four or five different parts that must not mix. If more compartments are needed, use a second tote or a different container, such as a Hippo or Bull bin on a panel.
Partitions are best used to prevent damage and mixing, and not to cram in more than the tote should carry. A kit tote with four compartments, each holding one part type in the correct quantity, can be checked in seconds by counting the filled compartments. A kit where all four parts are loose in one tote has to be counted piece by piece, which is slower and less reliable. Where the parts are sensitive to contact, such as cosmetic parts or polished components, partitions also stop pieces from rubbing together on a trolley.
- AK-421/HP, a horizontal partition for the AK-421.
- AK-421/HP/S1, a horizontal partition with a single slot for the AK-421.
- AK-421/VP/S3, a vertical partition with three slots for the AK-421.
- AK-422/HP, a horizontal partition for the AK-422.
Totes in a kitting routine
Kitting is the practice of gathering all the parts for a job or an assembly into one container, so that the operator at the line has everything within reach and does not have to walk to the stores for each item. It reduces walking, reduces missing parts and makes progress visible, because a kit that is complete or incomplete is obvious. The tote is the natural carrier.
A working routine looks like this. The stores team receives a work order or a build plan and picks the parts for each job into a tote, with partitions where parts must be separated. The label on the tote's large label holder shows the job number, the quantity, the station and the date. The tote is placed on a trolley and delivered to the line at a scheduled time. When the line has consumed the kit, the empty tote goes back on the trolley and returns to stores to be cleaned, relabelled and refilled.
The tote's dimensions matter here. A kit that must fit within the 365 x 230 mm inside footprint has to be designed around it, which sometimes means asking the design team to avoid parts that exceed that length or to pack long parts separately. This is a well-known source of friction in assembly plants: a part that does not fit the tote ends up in a carrier that nobody planned for, and the kitting discipline begins to erode. Settling the sizes before the programme starts avoids it.
Count your totes. A kitting system needs enough totes to cover the stores, the transit, the line and the return, plus a buffer. The classic mistake is to buy enough for the line and forget the ones in transit and in the wash. As a rough starting point, think in terms of one tote per job in each stage of the loop, plus a few spare, and then tune it using the actual cycle time.
Totes in picking: batch, order and zone
In a warehouse or a spares store, totes are the carriers for picked orders. There are several ways to organise the work, and the tote fits each of them.
In order picking, a picker takes one tote per order, walks the aisle collecting the items on the list and delivers the tote to packing. The tote's label identifies the order. The method is simple and accurate, and it works well for small orders.
In batch picking, a picker collects several orders at once, using a trolley with several totes and a partition or a position for each order. The pick walk is shared, so travel per order is shorter. A trolley that holds four or six totes in fixed positions, each with its own label, lets the picker put each item into the right order tote as it is picked. The method suits high-volume operations with many small orders.
In zone picking, an order moves from zone to zone in a tote, and each zone's picker adds the items from their section. The tote travels with the order until it is complete. This is good for large stores where one person cannot cover everything.
Whichever method you use, keep the tote size consistent across the operation, so that trolleys, conveyors, packing tables and shelves can be designed around a single footprint. The 400 x 255 mm outside footprint of the ALKON tote is a useful standard to design around, and the two heights give a choice without breaking the pattern.
Totes on trolleys and in shelving
A tote is only as useful as the carrier that moves it. Plan the trolley and the tote together. A shop floor or picking trolley with shelves at the right spacing, sized for the tote's outside dimensions with a few millimetres of clearance, will hold the totes steadily and make them easy to lift. The anti-skid base of the tote helps, because it resists sliding when the trolley starts and stops. Where you want a tote to stay put on a sloping or smooth shelf, the anti-skid base earns its place.
For shelving, the catalogue's note that the tote is compatible with shelving and vertical storage systems means that it can be used as a unit load on a shelf, or placed in a vertical storage unit where it is drawn out as a drawer would be. Test the real shelf. Measure its clear depth and the opening height, and check that a tote can be inserted and removed without fouling the shelf above. Leave space for a gloved hand to reach under or around the tote, since a tote that has to be dragged out is one that will be damaged.
When totes are stored empty, stack them neatly, either in a marked zone or on a dedicated stand. A fleet of totes left in random corners is a fleet that will shrink, as people take them for other uses.
Totes beside fixed bins: using both properly
The strongest layouts use totes and fixed bins together, each doing its own job. A common pattern is a small-parts store where the stock lives in Supra, Hippo or Bull bins on louvre panels and Panda shelf bins on shelving, and the picks for a job are collected into a tote. The fixed bins hold the permanent addresses, and the tote carries the pick to wherever it is needed. When the job is done, any leftover parts return to the bins, and the tote goes back for its next load.
This division makes both systems simpler. The fixed bins are labelled and counted on a cycle, and their positions are stable. The totes are labelled with the job and tracked as carriers, and they are not confused with stock. A person who sees a bin on a panel knows it is stock, and a person who sees a tote on a trolley knows it is a job in progress. Mixing the two, with stock in totes on the floor and jobs in fixed bins, destroys the distinction and makes both harder to manage.
For bulk and reserve stock, the Mammoth bin, at 820 x 315 x 300 mm outside, is the natural partner for the tote. A Mammoth bin on pallet racking holds the reserve, and totes carry smaller quantities forward to the picking faces. The tote's smaller size and lighter weight when loaded make it easy to handle manually.
Cleaning, hygiene and durability
Totes work hard. They are filled, carried, stacked, dropped, wiped and sometimes washed, many times a week. The details of the moulding matter more than they appear to.
The smooth internal wall makes a tote easy to clean, which is important when it carries parts that have been oiled or that leave dust. A tote can be wiped between uses, or washed in a bay if it has carried something that needs removing. There are no deep ribs inside to collect dirt. For regulated environments, a clean, uniform surface also simplifies audits.
The polypropylene copolymer is resistant to most industrial solvents, and ALKON bins carry the resin identification code 05 along with food-safe and recyclable marks. The material does not rust and does not splinter, so there are no sharp edges to cut a glove. It holds its shape over a wide temperature range, with ALKON stating a service range of -10 degrees Celsius to +70 degrees Celsius for its bin ranges.
Treat totes as assets. A simple discipline of cleaning on return, checking for cracks and removing damaged totes from circulation keeps the fleet in good condition. A cracked tote that is left in the system will eventually fail under load, and a dropped load of parts costs far more than the tote did.
Labelling totes so they can be read
The large label holder on the tote is its most important feature after its shape. A tote's label identifies a job, an order, a destination or a customer, and the label has to be read quickly, often by someone walking past a trolley. A few principles help.
If you are already using colour to distinguish the totes themselves, the label can reinforce it. Red totes carry red-stripe labels for exceptions, and blue totes carry plain labels for normal flow. The principle, as in our guide to bin labelling and colour coding, is that colour carries one meaning and the label carries the detail.
- Use a printed label, with the key information in large type at the top: the job or order number, then the station, then the date. Handwriting is slower to read and more likely to be misread.
- Keep the layout identical across all totes, so that the eye goes to the same place every time.
- Use colour sparingly and consistently, such as a coloured stripe on the label for priority.
- Replace labels when the job changes. A tote with a stale label is a tote with the wrong information.
- Include a barcode or a QR code where your system supports it, so that the tote can be scanned at each stage.
How many totes do you need
A tote fleet is sized by the loop it serves. Begin with the number of totes in use at any moment: one at each point where a tote is being filled, one in transit, one at the point of use and one on its way back. Multiply by the number of jobs or lines served. Then add a buffer for cleaning, repairs and the inevitable losses, typically a tenth or so, to be tuned with experience.
A worked example, with invented numbers, shows the method. A line consumes one kit tote every twenty minutes. The kit is built in stores forty minutes ahead, travels for ten minutes, sits at the line for twenty and returns in ten, and the empty tote needs thirty minutes for cleaning and relabelling. The total loop time is about 110 minutes, and with a consumption of three totes an hour, the line needs about six totes in the loop, plus a spare or two. Change the numbers and the answer changes, but the method holds.
Track the fleet. A tote that goes missing is a cost, and a fleet that shrinks by a few per cent a month will be half its original size in a year or two. Count totes at fixed intervals, set a rule that totes are not used for anything else and make it clear who is responsible.
Planning an order
When you are ready to buy, the planning is short. Decide the carrying jobs: kitting, picking, batch moves, returns. Choose the heights for each, using the shallow AK-421 for small parts and visibility and the deeper AK-422 for volume. Decide the colours and what each means. Choose the partitions for the totes that carry multiple parts. Calculate the fleet size with a buffer. Plan the trolleys and shelves to match the 400 x 255 mm footprint.
Standard packing helps with ordering: 10 pieces to a carton for the AK-421 and 5 for the AK-422, with partitions at 20 to a carton. A pilot of a few cartons is enough to test a trolley or a line, and then you can scale up once the layout has proved itself.
Shreeram Metafusion Engineers can supply the totes and partitions from Vashi, Navi Mumbai, along with the Supra, Hippo, Bull, Mammoth and Panda ranges, louvre panels, rails, stands and trolleys. We can help you check a trolley or shelf against the dimensions, suggest a layout and put together a quotation. Product pages on this website list the full dimensions and packing for every item.
Common mistakes to avoid
Several errors recur in tote programmes, and each is easy to avoid.
- Buying totes before measuring the parts. A tote that does not fit the longest part in its kit leads to workarounds that undermine the system.
- Mixing too many tote types. Two heights of one footprint is a manageable set. Five sizes from three suppliers is not.
- Using totes as storage bins. A tote that sits on a floor for months with a label that nobody updates is a hidden stockroom.
- Overloading. A deep tote full of heavy parts is hard to lift and risks injury. Plan the weight as well as the volume.
- Ignoring the label. A tote without a readable label is just a box. Standardise the label and enforce it.
- Letting the fleet leak. Totes taken for other uses vanish from the loop. Count them and assign them.
- Forgetting the cleaning loop. A system with no time set aside for cleaning and relabelling will start to use dirty or mislabelled totes.
Putting totes to work
The ALKON tote range is small on purpose. Two heights, one footprint, a handful of partitions and a clear set of features give a floor the standard it needs without the sprawl that comes from buying carriers one job at a time. Used with fixed bins for stock and larger bins for reserve, the totes become the part of the system that moves, and moving is where most of the time and the errors live.
If you are planning a kitting trolley, a picking route or a line-side delivery loop, start with the parts and the trolley, choose the heights and the partitions, then fix the label and the colour rules. If you want a second pair of eyes on the dimensions, contact our team at Vashi, Navi Mumbai. We are an authorised stockist of ALKON Plastics Pvt. Ltd. and can supply from the full catalogue.
Frequently asked questions
What are the sizes of the Alkon tote bins?
There are two. The Tote Bin AK-421 measures 400 x 255 x 100 mm outside and 365 x 230 x 90 mm inside, and is packed 10 to a carton. The Tote Bin AK-422 has the same 400 x 255 mm footprint but is 200 mm high outside and 190 mm high inside, with internal dimensions of 365 x 230 x 190 mm, and is packed 5 to a carton. Both are moulded from polypropylene copolymer and are available in red and blue.
Can the totes be divided into compartments?
Yes. Each tote has slots for either three horizontal partitions or one vertical partition. The partition range lists AK-421/HP, a horizontal partition for the AK-421, AK-421/HP/S1, a horizontal partition with a single slot for the AK-421, AK-421/VP/S3, a vertical partition with three slots for the AK-421, and AK-422/HP, a horizontal partition for the AK-422. Partitions are packed 20 to a carton and are black.
Do the tote bins stack?
Yes, they are designed to stack, and they have an anti-skid bottom, which helps a stack stay where it is on a trolley or shelf. Check the load on the lowest tote when you stack, and do not stack higher than the weight of the contents allows. A heavy product should go in the shorter AK-421 with a lower stack limit, not in a tall stack of AK-422 totes.
Is there a label holder on the tote?
Yes. The catalogue lists a large label holder on the tote, which is the part that makes a tote usable for kitting and picking, where the label has to identify a job, an order or a station and be readable from some distance. Use a printed label, not handwriting, and keep the format the same across all totes.
Are the totes suitable for oily or washed parts?
The catalogue lists a smooth internal wall for easy cleaning, and the polypropylene copolymer used is resistant to most industrial solvents. That makes them suitable for parts that arrive with a film of oil, and a tote can be wiped or washed between uses. For specific chemicals, check compatibility against the product information before use.
Do the totes fit shelving and storage systems?
The catalogue describes them as compatible with shelving and vertical storage systems. Because the outside footprint is 400 x 255 mm, plan shelf depth and width against the real shelf you intend to use, leaving a little clearance for hands, and trial one before ordering a full set. Our team can help check a particular shelf or trolley against the dimensions.
How do totes differ from Hippo, Bull and Mammoth bins?
Hippo, Bull, Supra and Rhino Tuff bins are open-front bins designed to sit at a fixed address on a shelf, panel or rail, where a hand reaches in from the front. Mammoth bins are large, at 820 x 315 x 300 mm outside, for bulky items and reserve stock on pallet racking. The tote is an open-top carrying container for moving batches between places, with a label holder and a stackable shape. Many stores use all of them, each for the job it suits.
Can I order the tote bins in small quantities?
Standard packing is 10 pieces to a carton for the AK-421 and 5 for the AK-422, and partitions are 20 to a carton. Our team can advise on a first order sized to a pilot trolley or a single production line, and then scale to the full fleet once the layout has proved itself.
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