The configurator pallet racking never had
How a European pallet racking manufacturer turned bays, beam levels, and load ratings into one tool that returns a SEMA-checked, buildable spec in minutes instead of days.
The industry
Pallet racking is a $13 billion global market growing toward $21 billion by the early 2030s — and one of the most consolidated in industrial storage, with the top five makers holding over 60% of it. Yet nearly every one of them still sells the same way: a dealer or systems integrator emails a rough layout, and an estimating team turns it into a buildable, load-safe spec by hand.
The client
A European manufacturer of adjustable pallet racking — frames, beams, decking, and the impact protection that goes with them — selling through a network of dealers and systems integrators. Their catalog is deep by nature: frame depths and heights, beam profiles and pitches, load ratings, decking, finishes, and layout all multiply together into thousands of valid combinations, each bound by strict compatibility and load rules.
The client has asked to remain anonymous, so identifying details are omitted here.
The problem
Every project started as a rough sketch or an email: a bay count without a load figure, a height that ignored the building's clear height, a beam choice that wouldn't pass deflection. The estimating team spent its days reconstructing what the customer actually meant, checking each run against capacity tables and SEMA rules before a single price could go out. Every missing detail added another day.
The catalog had every answer. Navigating it safely was the whole job.
What we built
A visual configurator that builds a racking run the way an engineer would — bay by bay, load-aware, and standards-checked at every step:
- Build a run bay by bay: bay width, frame depth and height, beam levels, and beam pitch, with a live elevation that redraws as you go.
- Load-aware from the first click. Enter pallet weight, load height, and clearances, and combinations that can't carry the rated load never appear.
- SEMA-style compliance checks in real time: frame and beam utilisation, beam deflection against span/200, and a generated load notice plate.
- A complete bill of materials, frames, beams, decking, floor anchors, and impact protection, with part numbers, steel weight, and a ballpark budget.
At the end, the buyer gets an elevation of their exact run, a full bill of materials with part numbers, and a budget figure, and submits it as a complete specification. The manufacturer's team receives a request that's already load-checked and ready to firm-quote — every field present, every bay valid.
Try it yourself
This one isn't a mockup. Build a run, watch the load checks update live, and download the spec sheet. Explore it right here, or open it full-screen.
What changed
Days → min
from rough layout to firm quote
Requests that used to sit with the estimating team for days now arrive as a complete, load-checked spec the sales team can price in minutes.
Every bay
SEMA-checked before it's sent
Frame and beam utilisation, deflection, and load notice are validated as the buyer builds, so unbuildable or overloaded runs never reach the quote stage.
1st
in their dealer channel
The first maker in their segment to let dealers and integrators self-configure a full racking run online, turning a quoting bottleneck into a sales channel.
Questions, answered
What can a pallet racking configurator handle?
Full runs of adjustable pallet racking: bay widths, frame depths and heights, beam levels and pitch, decking, finishes, floor anchors, and end-of-run impact protection, across single, double, and back-to-back layouts. The rules engine only offers frame and beam pairings the manufacturer actually makes and that pass the load check, so a buyer can't spec a bay the factory can't build or the floor can't take.
Does it respect racking safety standards like SEMA?
Yes. Every configuration is checked live against the manufacturer's own capacity tables and SEMA-style rules: frame and beam utilisation, beam deflection held to span/200, and a load notice plate generated from the final spec. The buyer sees a green, amber, or red status at each step instead of finding out at the design-review stage.
Can dealers and systems integrators use it themselves?
That's who it's built for. Instead of emailing a rough layout — a bay count without a load figure, a height that ignores the building's clear height — they configure the exact run and every request arrives complete, buildable, and already load-checked.
How long does a configurator like this take to build?
Reliental builds a free working concept of your own product in about a week, and a full configurator typically goes live in about 4–5 weeks — a fraction of the six-figure, multi-month timelines of enterprise CPQ platforms.
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