17th International Logistics Total Expo 2026 (LTT2026) exhibitor series, Part 10
When a warehouse looks at automation, the conversation usually starts with machine performance. How many units, in how many seconds, how many items an hour.
But the first thing that changes when you install it is not the machine. It is the category of the building.
First, the line the Fire Service Act draws
Article 12(1)(v) of Japan's Fire Service Act Enforcement Order lists, among the properties that must have a sprinkler system, the following.
Properties under item (xiv) of Appended Table 1 — that is, warehouses — where the ceiling is more than 10 metres high and the total floor area is 700 square metres or more, and which are rack-type warehouses. The provision adds that where there is no ceiling, the measurement is taken from the underside of the roof.
The same provision defines a rack-type warehouse like this.
"A warehouse in which racks or similar structures are installed and which is equipped with a device that conveys the stored goods by means of a lift."
This is where the reading splits in two. Having tall racks is not enough on its own. There must be racks and a device that moves the stored goods by lifting them. When both are present, the building is a rack-type warehouse.
Put another way — a warehouse whose racks have simply been made taller and a warehouse with a lifting conveyance system in those same racks are different buildings under the Fire Service Act. Even if the contents and the floor area have not changed at all.
Warehouse automation at LTT2026 — three ways of solving it
| How it is solved | What is taken off the person | What the exhibits led with |
|---|---|---|
| ① Solve it with height | Searching and retrieving | Storage density |
| ② Take carrying off the floor | Walking the goods over | Unmanned travel and layout changes |
| ③ Take lifting and stacking away | Hands and back | Heavy loads and collaboration |
① Solve it with height — the automated-storage and shuttle exhibits showed both pallet-level and case-level systems, and those leading with storage density stood out. The premise is raising capacity without adding floor area. Many also stated integration with a WMS.
② Take carrying off the floor — in the AMR and AGV exhibits the word appearing most often in the content was "conveyance," followed by "unmanned" and "travel." Unlike fixed installations, exhibits lined up around being movable as the layout changes. Safety wording — obstacle detection, stopping — was repeated about as often.
③ Take lifting and stacking away — in the picking, palletising and depalletising robots the axis was palletising and depalletising, with heavy loads and collaboration (working in the same space as people) coming up repeatedly. To handle loads whose box sizes and stacking patterns are not uniform, many exhibits stated vision and AI alongside.
Sorters and conveyors, vertical conveyors, unmanned forklifts and assist devices were also exhibited. This article does not go into the content of the smaller groupings.
Of the three, which one moves the building's category
Back to the definition. Racks plus a lifting conveyance device.
② runs along the floor. ③ stands in for the hands. On their own, neither lifts goods inside the racks. ① is precisely the method that does.
But this is not decided by the category name. What the provision looks at is not the product classification but whether the warehouse has racks and a lifting conveyance device. Install a conveyance machine that goes into the racks and moves up and down, and it touches the same line even if it is called an AMR. What to look at is not the product name but whether goods go up and down inside the racks.
What changes once it is a rack-type warehouse
Article 13-5 of the Enforcement Regulations decides what follows.
First, the head type is restricted. What goes into a rack-type warehouse is a closed-type sprinkler head of the standard type — limited to those with an effective spray radius of 2.3 and a head size designation of 20.
Second, the ceiling alone is not enough. In the part where racks are installed, heads must be placed so that the horizontal distance from any point to one head is 2.5 metres or less, and in addition at least one head per height interval set by grade. Outside the racks, the ceiling takes a horizontal distance of 2.1 metres or less.
And horizontal shielding plates — boards that shield the inside of the racks horizontally — are installed in flame-retardant material, at height intervals set by grade.
| Grade | Heads inside the racks | Horizontal shielding plates |
|---|---|---|
| I | At least one per 4 metres | Within every 4 metres |
| II and III | At least one per 4 metres | Within every 8 metres |
| IV | At least one per 6 metres | Within every 12 metres |
In other words, the racks are no longer only for storing — they become a structure that fire-suppression equipment sits inside. How many levels to build and where to divide them becomes a question on the same drawing as the fire-protection design.
And the grade is decided by what you put in it
This is the part that does not come out of the machine specification.
The Enforcement Regulations divide rack-type warehouses into grades I to IV according to the type of the stored goods and of the containers and packing materials. The yardstick is how many times the quantity set in Appended Table 4 of the Order on the Regulation of Hazardous Materials applies — designated combustibles at 1,000 times or more (300 times for high-calorific fusible articles), or 100 times or more (30 times for the same), and for containers and packing materials 10 times or more.
With the same racks, the same height and the same conveyance system, changing what you put in changes the grade, and with it the head spacing and the shielding-plate spacing. This is why an automation study does not end with selecting the machine.
And which multiple a product falls under is decided not only by the product itself but also by the container and the packing material. The same contents in a different container can land in a different band. This is a place to check before saying "it fits."
We will take the enquiries together, on your behalf
Companies exhibiting at a show are waiting for enquiries. But if you approach them one by one, sales contact keeps coming from the ones whose conditions do not fit. The more of them there are, the heavier that becomes, and comparing stops being possible.
We have organised the exhibit information for this show in full, and we handed our card to the exhibitors at the venue. Tell us what, in what volume, at what temperature band, and what your ceiling height is, and we will check with the ones that fit and come back with the answers collected in one place. We do not pass your contact details to them without your agreement.
What we hand over is information. We are not a distributor or licence holder for any one company; we set out several approaches to the same problem side by side. From our position importing and distributing pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and food, we also tell you how these fit with your pack configuration and storage conditions.
Primary sources
- e-Gov Law Search — Fire Service Act Enforcement Order (Article 12(1)(v) and Appended Table 1)
- e-Gov Law Search — Fire Service Act Enforcement Regulations (Article 13-5)
- e-Gov Law Search — Order on the Regulation of Hazardous Materials (Appended Table 4)
The descriptions of exhibits in this article organise trends from the exhibit information published by the organiser and from public information on each company's official website. No individual product or company names are given, and no comparison or evaluation of merit is made. Published content is as of August 2026. Which provisions apply and what equipment is required depend on the conditions of the building and on what is stored, and any individual determination rests with the competent authority.
