Australian Museum picks up pace with Bravi EWPs

One of the country's major public museums is reaping the rewards of its investment in a new fleet of Bravi elevated work platforms (EWP), with employees at its warehouse finding the units to be an efficient and easy way to access over 250,000 items at the site.

The Italian-made Bravi platforms were recently launched into the Australian market by Toyota Material Handling Australia (TMHA).

The Australian Museum currently has two Bravi Spin-Go stock picker EWPs in operation at its 3000 square-metre warehouse in Castle Hill, with plans to add a larger Bravi Sprint EWP to the existing fleet.

The 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.

The Bravi Spin-Go EWPs are currently used in Australian Museum's warehouse 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," says the Australian Museum's Dr Divljan. Once the higher reach capacity Bravi Sprint stock pickers are added to the fleet, they will be used in the remainder of the warehouse that sits on a solid floor and is fitted out with regular pallet racking.

"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 says.

TMHA business development and compliance sales manager, Andrew Jones, says the company had taken a 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," he says.

"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," Jones explains.

A key advantage of the Bravi Spin-Go EWPs, according to Dr Divljan, is staff members were able to familiarise themselves with the machines and get to work on them fairly 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," she says.

Besides the Spin-Go and Sprint models, 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.

For more information on the Bravi EWPs, visit TMHA's website at toyotamaterialhandling.com.au.