Most forklift accidents are blamed on operator error, but that is just partially true – and something of a cop-out. Rough estimates say that a quarter of forklift accidents could be avoided by addressing environmental concerns. When you eliminate those, it helps you understand better when a driver is truly ineffective, or just hamstrung by the way your warehouse is set up. In other words, before you point the finger at the driver, take a look at your operation. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: OSHA, warehouse safety, forklift safety
Posted in Forklift - Pedestrian Safety|
Typically, you see Vertical Lifts deployed in heavy industrial settings. They’re frequently used in multilevel facilities, in manufacturing plants, or paired with a mezzanine. Cisco-Eagle’s Houston office broke that mold by implementing a lift in a unique application: to help the University of Texas marching band access the field.
Tags: vrc, Lifts, Material Handling, pflow
Posted in Lifting & Lift Systems|
You can see some of the mistakes happening in this video. Others aren’t so obvious.
Tags: warehouse safety, pallet racks, forklift safety, industrial accident
Posted in Safety & Ergonomics|
Take a few minutes to watch this video from WorkSafeBC on how to prevent forklift injuries from a pedestrian’s point of view.
As a pedestrian in a forklift environment, it’s your responsibility to keep yourself safe. Anyone who runs a warehouse or industrial facility understands the dangers, and drivers should be trained. Do you train the pedestrians, the order pickers, the managers, and vendors who sometimes roam your facility and are exposed to forklift traffic? Watch the video. It’s 12 minutes long, and worth every second.
Tags: Pallet Rack, Manufacturing, industrial safety, warehouse safety, storage systems, forklift safety, warehousing
Posted in Forklift - Pedestrian Safety|
The age-old argument of top-versus bottom-driven horizontal carousels comes up all too frequently (at least among carousel people). You may think it doesn’t matter that much but in fact, it makes all the difference in the world. Supporting something from underneath makes sense. After all, trains, cars and most rolling objects are bottom-supported. Yet, the best designed horizontal carousels in the world are top-supported units that outperform bottom-supported units in both speed and efficiency. How can that be?
Posted in Automation, Labor & Efficiency|
If you’ve ever stopped at a traffic light, and shuddered at the texting, teenage (or all too often, an adult) driver in the next lane, you probably thought this is an irresponsible person who shouldn’t be behind the wheel. Given statistics that smart phone users are impaired as drunk drivers, it’s a serious and deadly issue; most states have laws specifically forbidding texting on the road. The question is, do you tolerate that kind of distractions for forklift drivers in your warehouse? Should you have the same rules? (Short answer: yes).
Tags: warehousing, Pallet Rack, forklift safety, distracted driving
Posted in Forklift - Pedestrian Safety|
We sell loads of shelving all over the country, and one of the persistent issues is the cost of shipping. In particular, that’s an issue for industrial rivet shelving, which is the most economical type of shelving with the highest capacity. It is easily the most popular industrial shelf type going. For many customers, shipping an all inclusive shelving system is the easiest, most convenient thing — we do it all the time.
Tags: warehousing, Industrial Shelving, storage, shelving
Posted in Storage, Organization & Workstations|
Cliff Holste at Supply Chain Digest (opens in a new window) has a good piece on ways to improve picking productivity.
Distribution centers will benefit from emerging automated case picking technologies, but those don’t fit for every operation, at every level. They’re also expensive upgrades, so your ROI has to be considered as well.
Tags: distribution center, ROI, Order Picking & Fulfillment, Warehouse Management, warehousing, order fulfillment
Posted in Order Picking & Fulfillment|
Walk any warehouse, manufacturing facility, or commercial storage operation and you’ll almost always find two things: forklifts and dock doors.
If that building has been in place for any length of time, you’ll also find dinged, dented, ruined or replaced dock door guides, pallet rack frames, building columns, etc. While many operations take steps to use guard rails or bollards to shield their critical machinery, dock doors can be left out.
Posted in Safety & Ergonomics|
Push back rack systems are excellent high density storage solutions — perhaps the most economical way to squeeze space out of a crowded warehouse. All loads are stored and retrieved from the same aisle. This reduces the number of aisles needed in a facility, freeing up more space for storage. Aisles can take a great deal of space up in a typical warehouse, so by implementing a pushback pallet rack system, you essentially swap selectivity for space. Push back rack systems provide a Last-In-First-Out (LIFO) inventory rotation, so you have to be certain your load fits. If it does, congratulations — you’ve just saved a lot of space.
But there are issues that can arise when pushback rack is inappropriately specified or utilized.
Posted in Pallet & Warehouse Racks|
