One of the country’s major public museums is enjoying the benefits of Toyota Material Handling Australia’s (TMHA) new range of elevated work platforms (EWPs) at its new, purpose-built warehouse facility in Sydney’s west.
The Australian Museum currently has two Bravi Spin-Go stock picker EWPs supplied by TMHA in operation at its 3000m2 warehouse in Castle Hill, with plans to add a larger Bravi Sprint EWP and other Toyota warehousing equipment to the fleet soon.
The Australian Museum’s Dr Anja Divljan said staff at the new facility were impressed with the functionality of the Bravi Spin-Go EWPs and found them to be an efficient and easy way to access some of the 250,000 items of the museum’s collection that are stored at the site.
“The staff here find the EWPs easy to use and they are functioning very well in what is quite a unique warehousing environment,” Dr Divljan said.
The BRAVI Spin-Go EWPs are currently used to access items stored in compactus units that reach four metres in height.
“This part of the warehouse is situated on a floating floor, so there is a weight limit in place,” Dr Divljan said. The higher reach capacity Bravi Sprint stock picker will be used in the remainder of the warehouse that sits on a solid floor and is fitted out with regular pallet racking.
“This area contains larger and heavier items, many of them on standard pallets, so we are also working with our local Sydney TMHA branch to assess our need for more traditional warehouse equipment like a counterbalance forklift, walkie stackers and pallet jacks,” she said.
“The team at TMHA have been really good to work with and very helpful since we opened this new warehouse late last year. They have worked closely with us to determine what we need and what would work best.”
TMHA business development and compliance sales manager Andrew Jones said the company had taken a real solutions-based approach to helping the Australian Museum set up its new storage facility.
“It’s a great example of the way in which we work with our customers, assess their individual needs and come up with a solution that meets their specific requirements.
“The Australian Museum has a lot of different items of varying size, weight and fragility that need to be stored and easily accessed by collections staff. We decided the agile Bravi Spin-Go EWPs would best suit their needs to start with, so we delivered a demonstration unit to the warehouse to physically illustrate and trial its capabilities and confirm that it was the right tool for the job,” Mr Jones said.
Dr Divljan said another advantage of the Bravi Spin-Go EWPs was that staff could be inducted and fully operational with them quickly.
“Most of our collections staff aren’t qualified to use a forklift, but they were able to get to work with the EWPs after TMHA organised on-site inductions and familiarisation to a standard recognised by the Australian market.”
TMHA began distributing a core range of four Italian-made Bravi EWPs last year to enhance its goal of being a true 'one-stop shop' equipment provider. Toyota Material Handling Australia is the sole Australian importer and provides full support for the product, including rentals, sales, parts and maintenance contracts.
The lightweight and compact Bravi Spin-Go pedestrian stock picker model with electric raising and lowering functionality has a 90kg payload capacity and 4100mm reach capacity, while the Bravi Sprint electric drive and lift stock picker model with fully automated pick platform as standard also has a 90kg payload and a maximum working height of 5300mm.
TMHA also distributes the 180kg capacity Bravi Leonardo HD EWP with a platform height of 2900mm and the 280kg capacity Bravi Lui 460 EWP with a platform height of 4600mm.
The Australian Museum’s Dr Anja Divljan with the Bravi Spin-Go EWP