Industrial Storage Bins in Chennai: Alkon Bins, ESD Storage and Line-Side Systems for Ambattur, Guindy, Sriperumbudur and Oragadam
Chennai has been described for decades as the place where India makes its cars, and the description undersells the city. Around the port and the old industrial estates at Ambattur, Guindy and Ennore, and along the corridors to Sriperumbudur, Oragadam and Maraimalai Nagar, there is an unusually deep mix of automotive assembly and component supply, electronics and electrical manufacturing, engineering and machine building, heavy fabrication and logistics. These plants share a few conditions that shape how they store small parts: a hot, humid, salt-laced coastal climate that is hard on bare steel and on cardboard, a strong audit culture inherited from the automotive and electronics supply chains, and a workforce that is skilled and accustomed to visual systems. Shreeram Metafusion Engineers Pvt. Ltd. supplies the ALKON range of industrial plastic bins, Panda shelving, Koala pick bins, Roo tilt bins, component organisers, ESD safe products, Visipro rack protectors and trolleys 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. This page is written for Chennai stores, production and purchase teams, and explains how the range suits a coastal, audit-driven industrial city.
A coastal industrial city, and what that means for storage
Storage products are usually discussed as if they lived in a neutral room: not too hot, not too damp, free of dust and salt. No plant in Chennai is like that. The city sits on the Coromandel coast, with warm temperatures through most of the year, high humidity, a sea breeze that carries a little salt well inland and a north-east monsoon that brings heavy rain in the last months of the year. These conditions are the background to every storage decision.
The practical effects are easy to list. Bare steel rusts faster than it does inland, so unprotected fasteners, bearings and tools in a stores need care. Cardboard softens and collapses, which makes a carton-based store a recurring expense. Labels stuck to cartons peel in the damp. Condensation forms on cold items brought into warm, humid rooms. And plastics, which do not rust and do not absorb moisture, come into their own.
This does not make steel useless. Powder-coated steel handles the climate well, as long as the coating is intact. What it means is that the mix of materials in a Chennai store should lean on polypropylene bins for the contents and powder-coated steel for the structure, with a routine to check the coating where it has been scratched. Our article on plastic versus metal storage bins sets out the reasoning, and it applies with extra force on the coast.
The Chennai industrial map
Chennai's industry spreads across several belts, each with a different character.
Ambattur and the older estates on the north-west side hold many small and medium engineering units, tool rooms, electrical and electronics makers, plastics converters and component suppliers. Their storage needs are for stores organisation, tool cribs, benches and small-parts racks.
Guindy, on the south-west, is one of the oldest industrial estates, with engineering units, instruments makers, service and trading firms. The needs are similar, with more smaller units and workshops.
Sriperumbudur, to the west on the Bengaluru highway, is a large industrial corridor with electronics, electrical, telecom and automotive manufacturers, many of them large and exacting about process and audit. Static control, line-side supply and tidy stores are the main needs.
Oragadam and Maraimalai Nagar, to the south-west and south, are automotive and engineering clusters, with assembly plants and tier-one and tier-two suppliers. Line-side supply, kitting, totes and trolleys, and stores shelving are the main needs.
Ennore and the port areas, and the warehouses along the highways, handle freight, containers and bulk storage. Racking protection, picking bins and totes are the main needs.
Heavy fabrication and shipyard-linked engineering add storage needs of a different kind, with large, heavy items, but even there small-parts storage for fasteners, consumables and spares is the same problem as anywhere.
Automotive plants: audits, kanban and kitting
The automotive plants of Oragadam, Maraimalai Nagar and the wider region operate in a supply chain where visual management is not optional. Line-side supply with kanban, supermarkets, kitting and milk runs is a daily practice, and the audits are frequent.
The ALKON range gives each part of the system a product. Supra bins hang on louvre panels and stands at the line, and the sizes from SB 1 to SB 6 cover most small parts. Totes carry batches and kits, with partitions where parts must be kept apart. Shop Floor and Tuff trolleys carry panels with bins in fixed positions, and a timed loop keeps them replenished. Panda shelving organises the stores that feed the line. Koala pick bins, which nest, are used in picking areas, and the catalogue notes that nesting reduces transport volume.
Our article on line-side supply with trolleys works through the loop arithmetic, our article on two-bin kanban explains the signal, and our article on storage bins for automotive manufacturing covers the general principles. Together they describe a system that auditors recognise and operators like, and the ALKON bins are the physical form it takes.
Electronics and electrical manufacturing
Sriperumbudur and the electronics corridor are home to large manufacturers of electronics, telecom equipment, appliances and electrical goods, together with a network of suppliers. Static control is a key concern, since a single board can carry sensitive devices that are easy to damage and expensive to replace.
The ALKON ESD range is built for this. Conductive Supra bins hang on louvre panels at the bench, a conductive component organiser holds small devices in 25 drawers, adjustable PCB carriers carry up to 31 boards each, fixed PCB carriers suit standard board sizes and ESD workstations provide a grounded, ergonomic bench with a mat, cord, surge protector, lighting and louvre panel. A conductive modular system and ESD Panda shelf bins on shelving give larger storage for the stores. Conductive items are black and non-conductive equivalents are grey, so the difference is visible.
Humidity on the Chennai coast helps static control, since moist air lets charge leak away more readily than dry air does, but it is no substitute for grounding, and air-conditioned clean areas can be very dry. Follow the plant's ESD control programme, and use our guide to setting up an ESD workbench for the layout and the daily routines.
For repair and rework centres, which are common in the city's electronics sector, the sliding units, rotary stands and component organisers give dense storage for the many small parts that a repair bench needs, as described in our article on choosing between sliding, rotary and fixed storage.
Engineering shops, tool rooms and the older estates
Ambattur and Guindy have decades of engineering history, and many units there have storage that has accumulated rather than been designed. Racks of old metal bins, wooden cabinets, biscuit tins of fasteners and cartons of spares are common, and they are the source of a lot of lost time.
A systematic approach turns these into a working store. Start with the tool room, which is the heart of an engineering unit. Louvre panels carry shadow boards, tool trays and bins, drawer containers organise cabinet drawers and trolleys carry tools to machines. Our article on tool room and tool crib organisation gives the layout.
Next, the spares store. Panda shelving with shelf bins in a regular grid holds the long tail of spares, and pigeon hole shelves hold items in their own packets. Our article on organising a maintenance spares store sets out the method, and our cycle counting article describes how to keep the records honest.
Then the benches and the line. Louvre panels with Supra and Hippo bins give each bench a neat, labelled set of parts within reach. A few hours spent setting up a bench this way save many hours of searching in a year.
Old metal bins that have rusted and bent can be retired. Plastic replacements do not rust, and the cost is usually recovered in a short time.
Humidity, salt and the steel in the system
The coastal climate makes a few practical habits worthwhile.
Keep rust-prone parts out of the open. Bare steel fasteners, bearings, tools and spares should be kept in their protective wrapping or in clean, dry bins, and any oiled parts wiped before return. A light film of oil on bare surfaces is an old and sound practice.
Check powder-coated surfaces periodically. Scratches that go through the coating let moisture reach the steel, and a small touch-up prevents a patch of rust spreading. Check the cut edges, bolts and fixing points of panels, stands and shelving, which are the places where coatings are thinnest.
Avoid trapping moisture. A closed, unventilated cupboard in a damp room can sweat, so allow air to circulate, and consider silica gel or similar for sensitive stock in sealed containers.
Choose bins for the contents. Polypropylene bins hold parts without rusting, and they do not absorb moisture. They are easy to wipe dry. Where parts are very sensitive to damp, keep them in sealed bags inside the bin.
Keep the floor dry. Do not stand bins or cartons directly on a wet floor. A shelf or a pallet raises them, and ALKON's shelving and stands are made to hold stock off the ground.
Ventilate where possible. Air movement reduces condensation and mould, and keeps the room comfortable for the people who work in it.
Warehouses, the port and the highways
Chennai's port and the highways that radiate from it carry a great deal of freight, and the warehouses and container freight stations along them hold goods of all kinds. The storage problems are those of any warehouse, with a coastal twist: forklifts working long shifts, racking that has to stand for years in humid air and a high turnover of stock.
For the racking, Visipro protectors, deflectors and bollards guard the uprights and doorways against forklift impacts. Our Visipro page lists the nine sizes of rack protector, the two deflector models and the bollard. For picking, Koala and Supra bins and Tote bins hold small items, and Mammoth bins, at 820 x 315 x 300 mm outside, hold bulky items and reserve stock on pallet racking.
Our page on warehouse storage bins in India sets out the principles of slotting and labelling that make a warehouse efficient. Walk the racking regularly, record impact damage and replace protectors that have absorbed a hit.
Pharmaceutical, medical and food-related users
Chennai also has pharmaceutical, medical device and food-processing units, and hospitals and clinics that hold large stocks of consumables. These users value cleanability, accuracy and order.
Polypropylene bins are easy to wipe and do not shed. Panda shelving with shelf bins, transparent shelf bins and pigeon hole compartments give structured storage for consumables and packaging. For hospitals and clinics, crash cart components, modular drawers and rotary units are described on our crash cart and hospital storage page. Lockable doors on Panda shelving secure valuable stock.
For food-related units, note that ALKON bins carry the food-safe and recyclable marks of the polypropylene they are made from, but the suitability of a bin for direct food contact in a particular process depends on the process and the applicable rules, so confirm with us and with your quality team before use.
Choosing a standard for a Chennai plant
A short procedure gives a plant a standard that will last.
Our guide to choosing the right storage bin size and our article on 5S storage bins on the shop floor give more detail. The aim is a store that a new person can learn in an afternoon.
- Walk the plant in all the areas, and note the climate conditions: damp, salt, heat and dust.
- List the parts by area, and measure representative sizes.
- Choose bin families for each job, favouring polypropylene bins for contents and powder-coated steel for structure.
- Choose three or four sizes per family from the inside dimensions.
- Choose the mounting: panels and stands, trolleys, shelving or units.
- For static-sensitive work, choose conductive bins, carriers and workstations, and follow the plant's ESD programme.
- Write the label format and location codes.
- Trial one area, review and extend.
A worked example: an electronics assembly cell
The following example is invented, with round numbers. An electronics assembly cell near Sriperumbudur builds control modules, with about two hundred component types, most of them small, and a mix of static-sensitive and non-sensitive items.
The cell manager sets a standard. Static-sensitive components go in conductive bins and in a conductive component organiser at each bench, with the conductive Supra bins hung on the louvre panel of an AWS 12060 workstation. Boards travel in adjustable conductive PCB carriers, with the guides set to the board width, and a few grey carriers are kept on a separate shelf for non-sensitive assemblies. Non-sensitive hardware goes in ordinary Supra bins on a nearby panel, clearly separated, and labelled.
The stores supply the cell with kits on a Shop Floor Trolley, using AK-421 totes for the parts of each job. A replenisher walks a short loop. Each morning the technician tests the wrist strap and the mat and logs the result, and each month a supervisor audits the cell.
When a customer's auditor visits, the cell shows a controlled, labelled, logged environment, and the audit is straightforward. Humidity on the coast helps with static, and the log shows that the routine is kept in the dry months too. The numbers are invented, but the pattern, separation, labelling, routine and record, is what the sector expects.
Replacing ageing metal bins and wooden cabinets
Many older Chennai units still run stores built from steel almirahs, wooden pigeon-hole cabinets, tin boxes and trays that were bought decades ago. They have served well, but they show their age in the coastal air: rusted hinges, warped doors, rough edges that catch hands and drawers that no longer slide. Replacing them in one go is rarely possible, and a phased plan makes sense.
Begin with the worst offenders, the containers that cause damage or lose parts, such as rusted bins that stain the parts inside them. Replace them with polypropylene bins of suitable sizes, labelled and mounted on panels or shelves.
Next, deal with the fast movers. Whatever the container, the parts that are picked most often deserve the best position and the clearest labelling. Move them first, and the daily benefit is felt at once.
Then retire the old furniture gradually, as bays are emptied and the contents are moved to the new system. Do not leave half-empty old cabinets in the store, where they will attract odd lots and undo the order. Sell, scrap or reassign them.
Keep a record of what has been moved. A simple sheet that lists each old location and its new address helps people who are used to the old layout, and avoids the confusion of a store whose map has changed overnight.
Throughout, keep production running. Set up each area during a planned break, and test before relying on it. A store that changes a bay at a time stays usable the whole way through.
Metric, imperial and the mixed hardware problem
Chennai's plants include many that run imported machines, and imported machines bring imported hardware. A single maintenance store may hold metric fasteners, inch-series fasteners and special threads for different brands of equipment, and the parts are often visually similar. A person picking the wrong one can cause damage that is expensive to undo.
Bins and partitions help. Give each thread series its own bin, labelled with the standard and size, and keep the series in separate zones or on separate panels. Where parts are close in appearance, use different bin colours, or different sides of the panel, to make a wrong pick difficult. Partitions in Supra, Hippo, Bull and Rhino Tuff bins let one bin hold several sizes of the same series without mixing.
Label by the full specification: thread, length, material and finish, not just a nickname. A label that says M8 x 25, zinc plated, hex head is unambiguous, while a label that says 8 mm bolts is not.
Count regularly. Mixed hardware drifts quickly, because the parts are small and a few in the wrong bin go unnoticed. A cycle count that covers a few locations a day, as in our article on cycle counting with storage bins, finds mix-ups while they are small.
Keep a reference board. A panel or a sheet with a sample of each type of fastener, labelled, lets a technician match an unknown part against the sample before picking.
Shipyards, heavy fabrication and large items
Chennai and its surroundings include heavy fabrication, shipyard-linked engineering and large equipment makers, whose main products are big and heavy. The storage of large items belongs to heavy racking, cranes and yards, and is outside the ALKON range. But every such unit also has a large number of small items, and those are the ones that are lost.
Welding consumables, grinding discs, fasteners, hoses, fittings, gloves and safety items all need homes. A fabrication yard may run a small-parts store beside the main shop, with bins on panels and stands, totes for carrying consumables to the job and trolleys for the crew. The Tuff trolley, with its heavier frame, suits rough floors, and Rhino Tuff and Bull bins suit heavier duty.
For larger or bulkier small items, such as hoses, fittings and tools, the Mammoth bin at 820 x 315 x 300 mm outside holds a lot, and the Tote AK-422 at 200 mm high carries medium loads. Panda shelving carries bay loads of up to 1000 kg, so a store of heavier consumables can use it with care for the shelf loads of 70 to 90 kg.
Keep the heaviest items low, and respect the load limits. In a heavy industry, it is easy to forget that a plastic bin is not a pallet.
Labels and training in a multilingual workforce
Chennai plants often employ people from across the south and beyond, and a store label that is clear in English may be less clear to someone who reads Tamil, Telugu, Hindi or another language more comfortably. As in any multilingual workplace, the safest labels lean on codes and symbols that need no translation.
Put the part code in large type and make it the key. Add a short name in the main working language of the area, and an English name for suppliers and auditors. Use colour bands and simple icons for families of parts, so a person can find the right zone without reading.
Train on the system, not just the language. A walk-through on a person's first day, showing the location codes, the colours and the routine, builds understanding fast, and a one-page guide on the wall of the store reinforces it.
Encourage questions. A new person who is unsure whether a bin is the right one should feel free to ask, and the answer should lead to a clearer label if the confusion was a fault of the label.
What to measure, and how to report it
A storage project needs evidence, both to improve itself and to justify more investment. A few simple measures serve.
Time to find a part is the simplest. Time ten picks before and after, in the same area, and record the average. Count the number of times an operator leaves a station to fetch a part in a shift. Count the shortages that stop work. Count the locations that match the record in a cycle count. And photograph the area, because a clear photograph is worth many numbers.
Report the results in a single page. Show the before and after figures, a photograph, the cost of the trial and the plan for the next step. Managers are more likely to support an extension when the evidence is brief and clear.
Keep measuring after the trial. A store that records its count accuracy and its shortages every month can see drift early, and can show customers and auditors a steady record. Our article on the true cost of storage bins describes how to turn the numbers into a payback case.
Common questions from Chennai buyers
Which colour of bin should we choose? Many bins come in red and blue, and conductive bins are black. Choose colours by meaning, not by taste: one colour for a family of parts, a supplier, a priority or a line. Write the key and display it.
Can bins be used in air-conditioned clean rooms? Polypropylene bins are suitable for many clean areas, since they do not rust and are easy to wipe. Check the requirements of the particular clean room, and ask us if unsure.
Can the steel panels be repainted or touched up? Yes. A scratch can be cleaned and touched up with a compatible paint, to stop rust spreading. Do it promptly in a damp environment.
Is there a risk of bins degrading in sunlight? Prolonged direct sunlight can age plastics, so keep bins in the shade where possible. Indoor use is the intended condition.
How are bins delivered? Bins are packed in cartons in standard quantities, listed on each product page, for example 60 pieces to a carton for the Supra SB 1. Panels, stands and trolleys are generally supplied for assembly on site.
Can I mix ALKON bins with another brand? You can, but the accessories, such as panels, rails, partitions and labels, are designed for ALKON bins, and mixing makes the system less consistent. A single family is easier to manage.
A second worked example: a tier-two stores near Oragadam
Here is a second invented example, this time from the automotive side. A tier-two supplier near Oragadam machines and assembles small brackets and housings, with a stores of about eight hundred part numbers: fasteners, bushes, seals, packaging, gauges and maintenance spares. The stores serve three lines and a maintenance team, and a customer audit is due in three months.
The stores manager begins with a walk-through and a count of the bin types in use, and finds eleven. The audit date gives the project a deadline, so the manager chooses a standard quickly: Supra SB 2, SB 3 and SB 4 for fasteners and fittings on louvre panels, Panda shelf bins in two sizes on 300 mm shelving for the long tail, AK-421 totes for kits, and a few Mammoth bins for bulky packaging.
The work is done bay by bay over eight weeks, starting with the fasteners. Each bin gets a printed label with part code and location, and each location is recorded on a sheet. A trolley carries kits to the lines, and a replenisher walks a short loop. A daily count of a few locations starts in week four, with a log.
At the audit, the manager shows the stores, the location list, the count log and the procedure. The auditor picks parts at random, and each is found within a minute. The finding is a commendation for visual management. The numbers are invented, but the story is typical: a deadline, a standard, a phased change and a record.
Getting started this month
A project does not need a long preparation. In the next few weeks, a Chennai plant can walk its stores and take photographs, list the fifty most-used parts and measure them, choose a bin size for each, order a small trial set with a panel and labels, and set up one bay. A month from now, the plant has evidence, a standard and a plan.
If it helps, send us the list of parts and the photographs, and we will suggest bins, panels and shelving from the catalogue. We would rather help you start small and well than sell you a large order that does not fit.
Planning with the seasons
Chennai's year has a few features that affect planning. The hot months, from April to June, bring high temperatures, and polypropylene bins should be kept out of direct sun and away from hot surfaces. The south-west monsoon is mild in Chennai, and the north-east monsoon from October to December is the main rainy season, with heavy downpours and occasional flooding.
In flood-prone areas, keep storage off the floor, with the lowest shelf raised, and keep critical stock above the likely water level. A kick plate on Panda shelving closes the base, and stands and trolleys keep bins off the ground. Plastic bins survive a wetting, and steel parts need drying and a check afterwards.
Cyclones occasionally affect the coast, and plants plan for them in their own ways. For storage, the sensible precautions are to secure tall units to walls or floors, keep heavy items low and cover stock that must stay dry.
What a standard supplier gives a coastal plant
A coastal plant has a particular reason to value continuity of supply. Damp and salt wear things out faster than they do inland, so replacement is a normal part of the budget, and a replacement bin must match the ones around it. A store that bought one lot from one supplier and the next from another finds that panels, partitions and labels do not fit, and the standard is lost.
A catalogue that stays available, with published dimensions and accessories that fit across the range, solves that. A purchase manager can order the same Supra SB 2 in a year's time and know it will hang on the same panel and take the same partition. A stores manager can draw a layout on paper and be sure it will work. And a maintenance manager can keep a small stock of spares and replace a damaged bin in minutes.
That is the kind of continuity that Shreeram Metafusion offers as an authorised stockist of ALKON Plastics Pvt. Ltd. Our thirty years in the business, the published catalogue of 476-plus products and a team that knows the range mean that a Chennai plant can build on one supplier instead of renegotiating every time.
How we serve Chennai customers
Shreeram Metafusion supplies from Vashi, Navi Mumbai. Send an enquiry through the contact page or by phone, with a parts list, bin sizes or a description of the problem, and we will suggest products from the catalogue, confirm quantities and terms and arrange dispatch to your plant.
We can help with sizing, layout and labelling, and the product pages on this website list the dimensions, packing and accessories for every item. As an authorised stockist of ALKON Plastics Pvt. Ltd. for over thirty years, we know the range, and we aim to give Chennai customers a clear and practical answer.
A checklist for a Chennai storage project
A plant that follows this path ends up with storage that suits the coast, passes the audit and lets its people get on with the work.
- Note the damp, salt, heat and dust in each storage area, and choose materials accordingly.
- Use polypropylene bins for contents, and check the coating on steel parts regularly.
- Keep rust-prone parts in protective wrapping or dry bins.
- Use conductive bins, carriers and workstations for static-sensitive work, and follow the plant's ESD programme.
- Choose a small family of bins and sizes, and label every bin and location.
- Protect warehouse racking with Visipro guards, deflectors and bollards.
- Plan for the monsoon, keeping stock off the floor where flooding is possible.
- Trial one area, and extend what works.
Frequently asked questions
Do you supply storage bins to Chennai from Vashi?
Yes. Shreeram Metafusion supplies the ALKON catalogue from Vashi, Navi Mumbai, to customers across India, including plants in Chennai, Ambattur, Guindy, Sriperumbudur, Oragadam and Maraimalai Nagar. Send an enquiry through the contact page with your parts list or bin sizes, and we will confirm products, quantities and terms for dispatch.
Is plastic better than steel for storage near the coast?
For bins and containers, polypropylene does not rust, which matters in Chennai's humid, salt-laden air. The steel parts of the range, such as louvre panels, stands, trolleys and shelving, are powder coated in light grey RAL 7035, which resists corrosion in normal indoor conditions, but cut edges, bolts and scratches should be checked and touched up. Our article on plastic versus metal storage bins compares the two.
What do you recommend for electronics and electrical assembly in the Sriperumbudur area?
Conductive Supra bins, a conductive component organiser, adjustable and fixed PCB carriers in conductive and non-conductive forms, ESD workstations with mat, grounding cord, spike protector and lighting, and a conductive modular system. See our ESD safe storage products page and our guide to setting up an ESD workbench for layouts and routines.
Which bins suit automotive line-side supply in the Oragadam and Maraimalai Nagar belts?
Supra bins on louvre panels and stands for small parts, totes for batches, and Shop Floor and Tuff trolleys for kits and replenishment. Panda shelving with shelf bins suits the stores. Our guide to line-side supply with trolleys describes the loop, and our automotive article covers the principles.
Do you supply Visipro rack protectors for Chennai warehouses and ports?
Yes. The Visipro range includes pallet rack protectors in nine sizes, pallet deflectors and bollards. Chennai's port-side and highway warehouses run heavy forklift traffic, and protectors on intermediate uprights, deflectors at the base and steel guards at aisle ends are a sound combination. See our Visipro page for the sizes.
How do I choose bins for a stores with many part numbers?
Measure the parts, group them by size, choose three or four sizes from the published inside dimensions, and label every bin and location. Our guide to choosing the right storage bin size sets out the method, and our team can check your list.
Can you help with a layout before I order?
Yes. Send us the room dimensions, a parts list and a description of how the parts are used, and we will suggest bins, panels, shelving or trolleys from the catalogue and a labelling scheme.
Related pages