From a total of 39,324 inspections last year, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) found 88,846 violations. For warehousers, distributors and manufacturers, the list is familiar.
That’s a compelling line from Ed Tittel’s article at SearchSecurity.com.
For Datacenter, server, and other sensitive information technology, it seems as if the security focus has sometimes missed the actual servers themselves. As Tittel says in the piece, “…just about any Windows NT, 2000 or XP laptop, booting this software (NT Locksmith) from a floppy permits a knowledgeable Windows person to take over the machine and reset the administrator password in 5-10 minutes.”
Left: Pflow Regional Manager Chuck Cobb .
Right: Cisco-Eagle Houston Market Manager Jason Eitreim
Pflow Industries (pronounced “flow”, by the way) recently recognized Cisco-Eagle as a top distributor of its vertical reciprocating conveyor and other lift products. Pflow Southeast Regional Manager Chuck Cobb presented the awards to our President, Steve Strifler, and to Houston Market Manager Jason Eitreim. (more…)
It’s safe to say that there is shelving of some kind in almost every warehousing operation. Even a sophisticated distribution center usually has some fallback storage in the form of rack, shelving or other storage. For those applications that require a lot of heavy-duty shelving, though, issues of capacity come to the forefront.
A few years back, we had a customer who asked us to quote a good amount of rivet shelving (you might call it particle board, boltless, or by a brand like Riveteer or Penco’s Rivet Rite). It was a good sized project and that customer ended up buying it used from another company. He was happy with it right up until it collapsed and dumped hundreds of bins of aerospace components to the floor. The problem? He was storing something very heavy on either a shelf or on a post that couldn’t handle it. Once one of the shelves buckled, it set off a chain reaction that was kind of like dominoes and a whole lot of shelves went down. The components were similar looking, except for sizes, and it was pretty much a total loss.
In 2006, Information Technology Magazine called the IT industry out, saying that physical security was the most overlooked aspect of technology security. I suspect little has changed since then, but found Sarah Scalet’s recent article in CSO Magazine instructive. Protecting data is not just a job for technologists. It also takes physical security, an often-overlooked element in the information technology world…
Cisco-Eagle’s Houston, Texas Field Operations team was recently honored by FedEx for its exceptional level of performance and use of quality management tools.
Our guys are always out there doing things for customers at difficult times, in crunch time, and on time. They make things work and keep them working, so it wasn’t any surprise for customers to be happy with them. Matt Lanclos, Tom Hull,and Art Rodgers from our Houston Field Operations group, and James Lawson, Regional Manager Field Operations for Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Texas, received FedEx Ground’s GCST Region Certificates of Excellence on January 9. There were also certificates for Cisco-Eagle’s Houston and Dallas offices…
We have uploaded the (free!) PDF of our latest paper, “10 Ways to use Material Handling to Increase Security.” It’s a quick, 4-page read with an additional page on identification systems that can help you quickly sort out the nature of what is being conveyed for a higher level of security and efficiency. It’s free, printable, and worth your time. You might ask why a material handling company is concerned with security. I might ask why one wouldn’t be concerned with security. Sure, Cisco-Eagle doesn’t sell cameras or alarm systems. We don’t consult on personnel or security systems, but what we do is inseparable from security, because the way you store and handle valuable items is impossible to separate from the way you secure them…
Wire decking is ubiquitous with selective pallet rack–it’s perhaps the most broadly-specified selective rack accessory. People use it to when they want pallet support with greater structural strength than other materials, when they want to load boxes or other non-palletized load onto racks, when they want to handle loads that aren’t deep enough to sit on uprights, and when they want to eliminate dust and debris inherent with solid decking materials…
We see a lot of structural mezzanines in our business in a range of facilities. They range from professionally manufactured to home-made, with quite a few fabricated by a local shop. It’s a good business for the fabrication shops (although maybe not so much for end-users, given the pitfalls), and if you go that route, you need to be sure your mezzanine fabricator is complying with OSHA & local safety regulations, particularly on guard railing, stairs and gates. You also have to look at local building codes. If your fabricator doesn’t routinely work with mezzanines, this is something you’ll have to do on your own. It’s not something to dismiss lightly. Honestly the best policy is to look at established vendors like WilDeck if you don’t want to micro-manage the details of building permits, code compliance, and OSHA’s blessings.
To max out both storage and selectivity, warehouse managers are frequently moving to higher-density storage systems like pushback rack instead of floor stacking or selective racks. Whether a pushback system makes sense for you is something that depends on what you’re storing, how you are accessing it, and what you need to do with it once it’s picked.
Pushback rack systems can give you up to 90% more product storage than selective storage rack systems and up to 400% more selectivity than drive-in racking systems. They’re probably the best balance between selectivity and storage density.
