Safety – A Manufacturing & Distribution Hot Button
Kelly Kamlager from Ladder Industries shares insights from ProMat 2015
In manufacturing & distribution, safety is an area of top concern, for both the protection of workers and financial ramifications for companies. We spent some time at ProMat with Kelly Kamlager from Ladder Industries to examine the importance of safety and compliance for industrial companies.
Safety and OSHA compliance are hot topics
Cisco-Eagle:Â I’m with Kelly from Ladder Industries. Talk to me about what Ladder Industries does to prioritize safety.
Kelly Kamlager: Safety is a hot button issue. It always is, obviously, with OSHA regulations and whatnot. The regulations that govern our workplace safety have to be met. That’s the minimum requirement. We believe in kind of going above and beyond that. For example, the new Edge Alert product is our open-gate safety alarm. When workers are actively engaged on an elevated platform with a gate, when two sensors on the gate are connected, there’s no noise, but when the gate is open, the sensors come apart, and then an alarm goes off, which indicates that there’s an open gate. And that’s a big deal because it then notifies the workers to close the gate when they’ve gone through it. It also alerts other employees that there is an open area.
Material handling is still active, growing and fine-tuning safety
Cisco-Eagle: In a completely different direction, what do you think about trends in your specific niche in the broader industry? What do you see that’s helpful?
Kelly: Right now the material handling industry is moving. There’s a lot of activity. There’s a lot of thought going into building and developing. There’s a lot of thought going into operations for safety, how to fine-tune things, how to optimize, how to make things easier and efficient and safer.
More skilled, educated workers are needed
Cisco-Eagle: That kind of leads to another discussion we were having about talent and finding and hiring the right people…
Kelly: Sure. In the material handling industry I see a very talented work pool of people. We’re seeking educated people, specialists, definitely not just your average Joe. There’s still places for the average Joe, but there’s also a place for educated people to work in this field because it’s very dynamic. There’s a lot going on. There are a lot of areas to get into in terms of engineering.
ProMat offers solutions for a competitive marketplace – safety and otherwise
Cisco-Eagle: So, one final thing – three takeaways. What are your people going to be getting out of this show? What will they be thinking about when they leave?
Kelly: I’ve been in sales, like, nine years, and this show is very vibrant. It’s becoming a great, high-level marketplace, where people are coming and really investigating, really wanting to see what’s new, and really shopping around because they’re very intent on seeking out how to improve their operations.
This is a very competitive marketplace, and in order to stay competitive your workplace has to be optimized. Your workplace has to be efficient. You have to streamline and cut out waste and be competitive. And there are a lot of solutions here to do so.
Tags: warehousing, OSHA, Safety & Ergonomics, hiring
Scott Stone is Cisco-Eagle's Vice President of Marketing with 35 years of experience in material handling, warehousing and industrial operations. His work is published in multiple industry journals an websites on a variety of warehousing topics. He writes about automation, warehousing, safety, manufacturing and other areas of concern for industrial operations and those who operate them.