Raw material storage and organization?

[zr1nsx]

I am curious how "organized" some of your shops are when it comes to raw material storage. Really I'm trying to get some ideas for organization of raw materials here at the shop I'm currently working for. We are quite diversified when it comes to the projects we run, so we have quite a large variety of materials that have never been properly stored prior to me coming on board. I hate seeing clutter laying around and this shop has quite a large amount of pure clutter. We are a carbon fiber fabrication shop primarily, but we also do a lot of water jet and general machining. The majority of our machining is of smaller scale (20" x 20" x 10"). The biggest problem is that the sheet stock is mostly stored horizontally and eats up a large majority of floor space. On top of the space issue, too much material gets overlooked because it's covered by material that was stacked on top of smaller sheets. The other issue is that we have quite a variety of materials that we keep on hand. At other shops I have worked for, I have always preferred storing everything in a vertical position. I usually cut or have our suppliers cut any bar stock into 6' lengths which makes it very convenient to store vertical. I also have always used heavy plastic totes for storage of all of the random cut-offs that are 12" in length or shorter. I like to label the totes with categories of what is contained in them so that others who are in the shop can have a quick visual as to where to start looking. Of course, when I have mentioned the concept of "cleaning and organizing" the fab shop area, 10 people will have 10 differing opinions on what should be done. I will more than likely adapt the storage solutions that worked best in my past experience, but it's always nice to see how others have used their ingenuity to effectively organize their operations.