Industrial Storage Bins in Coimbatore: Alkon Bins, Tool Room Storage and Panda Shelving for Pump, Motor, Foundry and Textile Machinery Units
Coimbatore is a city of makers in the plainest sense of the word. It is famous for pumps and motors, for textile machinery and spinning mills, for foundries and castings, for wet grinders, for electrical switchgear and for the thousands of small machining and fabrication shops that supply them all. The SIDCO estates at Kurichi and Kalapatti, the industrial areas of Ganapathy, Peelamedu and Sulur, and the lines of workshops along the Avinashi, Mettupalayam and Trichy roads form one of the densest clusters of small and medium engineering units in India. The people who run them are practical, cost-conscious and hands-on, and their storage problems are practical too: castings and machined parts waiting for the next operation, fasteners and fittings by the thousand, tool rooms full of cutting tools and gauges, and spares for machines that cannot be allowed to stop. Shreeram Metafusion Engineers Pvt. Ltd. supplies the ALKON range of industrial plastic bins, Panda shelving, Rhino Tuff and Bull bins, drawer containers, tool trays, trolleys and ESD safe products 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 explains how the range suits Coimbatore's engineering economy.
The city of a thousand workshops
Coimbatore's industrial strength comes from its small units. A pump or motor does not come from one large factory but from a chain of foundries, machine shops, winding shops, casting finishers, fabricators and assemblers, many of which are family businesses with a few dozen employees. Work moves between them by truck and by hand, and each unit holds a stock of parts in progress, tools, consumables and spares.
That structure makes storage a matter of many small decisions, not one large one. No single store holds the plant's inventory; instead, every shop has its own cabinets, benches and racks, and the quality of those small stores decides how fast work moves. A shop where tools and fixtures are in labelled places, where parts waiting for the next operation sit in labelled totes and where the spares for each machine are at hand runs faster and with fewer errors than one where everything is found by asking.
The practical tradition of the city suits a visual system. Coimbatore's engineers like things that are simple, strong and obvious, and a labelled bin on a panel is exactly that. What they want to know is whether it will last, whether it will carry the load and whether it will cost more than it saves. This page answers those questions.
The Coimbatore industrial map
Coimbatore's manufacturing is spread across several areas.
Kurichi, Kalapatti and Podanur, to the south and north-east, hold SIDCO and private estates with pump, motor, foundry, machining and fabrication units.
Ganapathy, Peelamedu, Saravanampatti and Vilankurichi, in the north, hold electrical, electronics, machine tool and engineering units, along with technology campuses.
Sulur, Arasur and Somanur, to the east, hold textile machinery, spinning, engineering and general manufacturing, with larger plants and warehouses.
Mettupalayam Road, Thudiyalur and Annur, to the north and north-west, hold foundries, pump makers, wet grinder makers and general engineering.
Tiruppur, Erode and Karur, in the surrounding belt, add knitwear, textile, dyeing and bus-body building, served by the same range.
Pumps, motors and electrical equipment
Pump and motor makers machine castings, wind stators and rotors, assemble units and test them. Their small-parts needs are dominated by fasteners, bearings, seals, gaskets, terminals, capacitors, windings and fittings, in many sizes.
Assembly benches benefit from louvre panels with Supra and Hippo bins at arm's reach, each labelled with the part code. Bearings and seals, which vary in size and are easily mixed, are best kept in separate labelled bins by size, with partitions where one bin holds several sizes of the same family. Terminals, capacitors and small electrical parts suit component organisers and Roo tilt bins.
Test benches and final assembly use trolleys carrying a job's parts, with kit totes for the items specific to each model. Our article on line-side supply with trolleys describes the loop, and the same method works in a small assembly shop.
Foundries and machining shops
A foundry holds patterns, core boxes, moulding materials, ladles' consumables, fettling tools and finished castings. A machine shop holds cutting tools, inserts, gauges, fixtures, coolants and the parts in progress. Both have tool rooms and spares stores.
Parts in progress are best carried in totes and Rhino Tuff or Bull bins, with a label for the job, the part number and the operation. A heavy casting is not a tote item, but a hundred small machined components are, and the AK-421 and AK-422 totes at 400 x 255 mm outside, with partitions where parts must not touch, serve well. The Mammoth bin at 820 x 315 x 300 mm outside holds larger items. A trolley carries totes from machine to machine.
Cutting tools and inserts are small and costly. Drawer containers divide tool cabinet drawers into labelled compartments, and a modular drawer system with a central lock holds inserts, counted weekly. Gauges and measuring instruments go in fitted trays, with a register of calibration due dates, as our article on tool room and tool crib organisation describes.
Dust, swarf and oil are facts of life in these shops. Smooth polypropylene bins wipe clean, and an oil-soaked bin can be washed and put back. Keep steel parts in clean bins with a light film of oil, and keep the heaviest swarf-producing operations away from the storage.
Textile machinery and spinning mills
The mills and machinery makers of Sulur, Somanur and the surrounding area hold a very large stock of spares: rings, travellers, spindles, rollers, aprons, belts, bearings, springs and fittings, for machines from many makers. A mill with several thousand spindles lives or dies by its spares.
Bins on panels, with the machine make and model and the part number on the label, put the commonest spares at the technician's hand. Panda shelving with shelf bins in a regular grid holds the rest, with the heaviest items low. Pigeon hole shelves hold boxed parts in their own packets. A count routine, a few locations a day, keeps the record true, as our article on cycle counting with storage bins describes.
Fibre and lint are the particular enemy in spinning. Wipe bins and shelves on a schedule, and use closed storage, such as doors on Panda shelving, for spares that must stay clean.
Wet grinders, appliances and light assembly
Coimbatore's wet grinder, appliance and light engineering makers hold motors, switches, drums, stones, housings, fasteners and packaging. Assembly lines run on kits and line-side bins, and packaging areas on totes and pick faces.
A line-side supply loop with a trolley, as described in our article, suits an assembly line of any size. Totes carry the parts of each model, bins hold the common fasteners, and a short loop keeps the line supplied. Packaging areas use bins for labels, manuals, accessories and fasteners, and pigeon hole shelves for printed matter and cartons.
Choosing sizes for Coimbatore's parts
A short tour of the ALKON sizes helps a Coimbatore buyer choose, using the published dimensions.
Measure your parts, compare with the inside dimensions, and choose three or four sizes. Our guide to choosing the right storage bin size sets out the method.
- Small fasteners, rivets and washers: Supra SB 1 at 125 x 100 x 60 mm, Rhino Tuff ARTB-05 at 109 x 104 x 49 mm or component organiser drawers.
- Nuts, bolts and small fittings: Supra SB 2 at 170 x 100 x 85 mm, SB 3 at 220 x 130 x 125 mm or Bull Bin 15 at 201 x 125 x 101 mm.
- Bearings, seals and medium parts: Supra SB 4 at 290 x 178 x 143 mm, Bull Bin 35 at 300 x 208 x 158 mm or Hippo 612/B at 355 x 220 x 150 mm.
- Larger parts and machined components: Rhino Tuff ARTB-50 at 457 x 280 x 255 mm, Bull Bin 55 at 510 x 310 x 200 mm or Supra SB 8 at 600 x 425 x 300 mm.
- Bulk and reserve stock: Mammoth bins at 820 x 315 x 300 mm.
- Carrying batches: Tote AK-421 and AK-422 at 400 x 255 mm.
- Tool cabinet drawers: drawer containers, six sizes from 75 x 75 x 45 mm to 150 x 150 x 75 mm.
Small units and the MSME way of buying
The great majority of Coimbatore's units are micro, small and medium enterprises, and their way of buying shapes what suits them. Decisions are quick and made by the owner, budgets are watched closely, and a purchase is expected to pay for itself within a year or so. A supplier who talks in generalities is soon dropped, and one who answers specific questions about size, load and price is remembered.
For such a unit, a simple first kit makes sense: two louvre panels on a wall with a set of Supra and Bull bins in three sizes, drawer containers for the tool cabinet, a tool tray at each bench and one Panda shelving unit for the spares. The cost is modest, the setup takes a weekend and the result shows immediately in the time saved looking for parts.
The payback is easy to estimate. Time ten searches before and after, multiply the saving by the number of searches in a day and the number of people, and compare the yearly value of that time with the cost of the kit. Our article on the true cost of storage bins sets out the method. In many small shops, the saving in the first year exceeds the cost.
Think about growth. A unit that begins with two panels and a shelf can add more as it grows, and because ALKON accessories fit across the range, nothing is wasted. Keep the standard simple, write it on one sheet and buy to it.
Subcontract chains and parts moving between shops
A distinctive feature of Coimbatore's industry is the movement of parts between units. A casting goes from a foundry to a machine shop, then to a finishing shop, then to an assembler. Each handover is a chance for loss, mix-up or damage, and each unit has to count what it receives and what it sends.
Totes make the handover clean. A tote of a standard size, labelled with the job, the part number, the quantity and the operation, travels with the parts, and the receiving unit counts against the label. Partitions keep parts from touching, which matters for finished surfaces. Many units agree a standard tote with their regular customers and suppliers, so that the same tote goes round the loop.
Counting at the handover prevents arguments. A tote with a fixed quantity, marked with a fill line, can be checked at a glance, and the record of what went out and what came back keeps the chain honest. Our article on cycle counting with storage bins describes the count routine, and the same discipline applies to parts in transit.
Keep the totes in circulation. A fleet of totes that leaks away is a cost, so number them, record where they are and agree who returns them. A small deposit or a simple register works in a close-knit trade.
Questions Coimbatore buyers ask
Which bin is strongest? The Rhino Tuff range is built for tougher duty, the Bull range is a strong general-purpose bin, and the Mammoth bin is the largest. Choose by size first, then by weight, and check the published loads for the panel or shelf.
Can bins handle oil and coolant? Polypropylene copolymer is described in the catalogue as resistant to most industrial solvents, and oily bins can be washed. Check compatibility for specific fluids, and keep oily parts in bins that can be wiped.
How do I carry parts between shops? In totes with partitions where needed, labelled with job and quantity, stacked on a trolley or in a vehicle. The anti-skid base helps in transit.
Can I get a printed price list? Prices depend on quantity and colour. Send us your list and we will quote.
Do you supply to workshops in Tiruppur and Erode? Yes. We supply across India from Vashi, and the same range serves the knitwear and textile units of the surrounding belt.
Climate and the Coimbatore plant floor
Coimbatore has one of the more pleasant industrial climates in India, with moderate temperatures through the year, helped by the gap in the hills that brings a steady breeze. The monsoon is moderate and the dust manageable. ALKON bins carry a stated service range of -10 degrees Celsius to +70 degrees Celsius, far wider than the city needs, and powder-coated steel resists the modest damp.
The practical concerns are oil, swarf and dust in machine shops, and fibre in mills. Wipe routines, closed storage for clean items and keeping storage away from the worst processes keep them in check.
Keeping the standard alive after the first month
The first month of a new storage system is easy, because everyone is watching. The test comes in the sixth month, when the owner is busy, a new worker joins and a batch of unfamiliar parts arrives. A few habits keep the standard alive. Write it on a single sheet, with the bin families, the sizes, the label format and the location code, and keep it where people can see it. Keep a small stock of spare bins, partitions and labels, so a damaged bin is replaced the same day. Make a short walk through the shop each week, looking for unlabelled containers, mixed bins and parts on the floor. And when a new part arrives, decide its bin and label before it is unpacked, not after it has been put wherever there was room. A shop that does these four things rarely needs to be reorganised again.
A worked example: a pump manufacturer's assembly shop
The following example is invented, with round numbers. A pump maker in Kurichi, with eighty people, machines castings, assembles pumps and tests them. Its assembly shop holds about four hundred small part numbers, in cartons on the benches and on old steel racks.
The owner sets a standard. Louvre panels over each of six assembly benches carry Supra and Bull bins for fasteners, seals and fittings. A Panda shelving unit with shelf bins holds the less-used parts. A Tuff trolley carries kit totes, one per pump model, from the stores to the benches. The tool room gets drawer containers and tool trays, and each machine gets a small panel for its consumables.
A morning count of a few locations, with a log, keeps the records true. The owner reports that assemblers stay at their benches, that kits are checked in seconds against the labelled compartments, and that the shop looks like a business in control when customers visit. The numbers are invented, but the pattern, a standard, labels, kits and a count routine, is one that Coimbatore's shops can follow.
What Coimbatore buyers can expect from us
Coimbatore's engineers are practical, and they judge a storage product by whether it carries the load, survives the shop floor and pays back. We welcome that test. Order a small set, load it with your own parts, leave it on the floor for a month and see. We would rather win the second order on evidence than the first on promises. For pump, motor, foundry and textile machinery units, the first order is usually a few panels, bins in three sizes, drawer containers for the tool room and one shelving unit, which together change how a shop feels within a week.
How we serve Coimbatore 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 unit. 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 aim to give Coimbatore customers a clear, practical answer.
A checklist for a Coimbatore storage project
- List your areas: machine shop, assembly, tool room, spares, packing and godown.
- Choose Rhino Tuff, Bull and Supra bins by weight and size, and totes for parts in progress.
- Organise the tool room with drawer containers, trays, shadow boards and a locked drawer system.
- Keep heavy items low and within the published loads.
- Label every bin and location, and set up a count routine.
- Trial one area, and extend what works.
Frequently asked questions
Do you supply storage bins to Coimbatore from Vashi?
Yes. Shreeram Metafusion supplies the ALKON catalogue from Vashi, Navi Mumbai, to customers across India, including units in Coimbatore, Kurichi, Ganapathy, Sulur, Tiruppur and Erode. Send your parts list or bin sizes through the contact page, and we will confirm products, quantities and terms for dispatch.
What suits a machine shop that makes pump or motor parts?
Totes and Rhino Tuff or Bull bins for parts moving between operations, Supra and Hippo bins on louvre panels at the machines for fasteners and tooling, drawer containers and tool trays for the tool room, and Panda shelving with shelf bins for the spares. A trolley carries a job's parts from one machine to the next.
Can plastic bins carry heavy machined parts?
The Rhino Tuff and Bull ranges are built for heavier duty, and the Mammoth bin at 820 x 315 x 300 mm outside holds bulky items. Each bin and shelf has published dimensions and loads: Panda shelves carry 70 to 90 kg each depending on depth, and bays up to 1000 kg. Keep heavy items low and within the limits, and never load a bin beyond what one person can lift.
How do I organise a tool crib with many cutting tools and gauges?
Zone the room by tool type, use drawer containers in cabinets, louvre panels with shadow outlines and tool trays for hand tools, fitted trays for measuring instruments with a calibration register, and a locked drawer system for the most valuable items. Our article on tool room and tool crib organisation sets out the method.
Is the range suitable for textile machinery and spinning mill spares?
Yes. Bins on panels hold needles, rings, travellers, bearings and fittings, with the machine make and model on each label, and Panda shelving holds the larger spares. Wipe bins on a schedule to keep fibre and dust under control.
Can I start with a small order?
Yes. A small trial set of bins, a panel and labels, set up on real parts, shows how the system works in your conditions. Ask our team about sample quantities when you enquire.
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