Since 25% of all warehouse injuries occur at the loading dock, warehousing and manufacturing operations need to pay close attention to this area. Shipping and receiving docks both suffer similar problems in that they are bustling places. At peak times they can get very busy, and when people are pressed for time, they become careless. So, what are the common injury types, and what can you do to avoid them?
Tags: forklifts, workers' compensation, shipping docks, loading dock safety
Posted in Docks & Shipping|
At Modex 2012, Hytrol Conveyor’s Boyce Bonham sat down with DCVelocity to discuss distribution center sustainability. We’ve linked the video below, which is worth a few moments of your time. How do initiatives to work greener, smarter, and better affect warehouses and distribution operations? Not surprisingly, these initiatives often save money, at least over the long term.
Tags: Sustainability
Posted in Warehousing & Distribution|
The situation is familiar: in a busy warehouse or distribution center, you can have dozens or hundreds of order pickers that walk the floor with carts and clipboards or scan guns to pick orders for shipping. These are usually focused people who have the job in mind. After all, you’ve probably told them how speed is of the essence – which it is. The problem is that in many or most operations, there are also forklifts, walkies, or electric powered jacks operating in the same space, often in tightly spaced pallet rack aisles.
And guess what? The guys driving those forklifts are busy and focused on the job, too. It’s almost assured that if you have this situation, you’ve had accidents, or near-accidents — which you may never hear of, until the near-miss isn’t a miss at all.
Posted in Safety & Ergonomics|
It’s always difficult to secure high-value inventory in the warehouse, and it’s even harder when the load resides in pallet racks, which are larger, have a conventionally open design, and more difficult to secure than inventory that sits on shelves or in carousels or within tool cribs. Pallet rack loads can be palletized or stacked on decking, but either way they are more “open” than other types of inventory. What are your alternatives?
Posted in Pallet & Warehouse Racks|
In a fast-paced distribution center, there is plenty of forklift traffic, moving conveyors, packing machines, carousels, and dock doors. Same with manufacturing; you have all kinds of production machinery, welding (human and robotic), and heavy material being handled, stacked, or processed, along with the forklifts and other handling equipment. It’s hard enough to keep your own people – the ones who should know the lay of the land – safe in these environments. But what about visitors who haven’t had the benefit of your safety training and the situational awareness that your employees develop over time?
Tags: pallet racking, Safety & Ergonomics, warehousing, Manufacturing, industrial safety
Posted in Safety & Ergonomics|
In warehouse & manufacturing operations, things get broken. They break in a number of ways, and it’s expensive. You’ve probably seen product broken or damaged in amazing and improbable ways if you’ve been in this business for any length of time. We had a client once buy a bunch of mismatched, used industrial shelving (not from us), only to see it collapse and dump thousands of tiny aircraft components on the floor. It had to be swept up and discarded since it was all mixed up and visually impossible to sort.
Those are extraordinary examples, but everyday inventory damage that cost “only” a few hundred or thousand dollars can savage your bottom line.
Tags: warehousing, customer service, product damage, inventory control, damaged goods
Posted in Warehousing & Distribution|
Over the past four decades, we’ve seen plenty of operations move. We’ve installed entirely new conveyor systems into functioning operations without disturbing the flow of existing work. We’ve seen companies pick up an entire distribution operation and move it across two hundred feet of parking lot into another building. It’s not new territory for us, and if you have managed a manufacturing or warehousing operation long, it’s probably not for you either.
Posted in Warehousing & Distribution|
If you are in the warehousing or material handling industry, you’ll find yourself identifying warehouse and handling equipment in movies or television shows quite often. Many of us have seen, for instance, the NFL graphics of a large distribution system used on Fox network for years. I’ve pointed out Hytrol conveyors in movies to my wife for years, to the point where she says it first when she sees it.
For fun, we have put together a list of the more famous scenes in entertainment history involving material handling equipment, and how it could have been done better.
Tags: Material Handling, movies
Posted in Warehousing & Distribution|
It’s important to control costs in your operation. What are some warehousing cost-cutting methods you can employ that don’t require extensive investment or re-tooling? Most of the costs of warehousing operations fall into the following categories:
Tags: Automation, employees, ergonomics, ROI, labor management, LCS, Warehouse Management
Posted in Warehousing & Distribution|
Especially in heavy manufacturing, machine shops, petroleum or chemical operations, large bundles of pipe, tubing, bar stock or other long, heavy loads must be stored and picked during the day. Multiple ways are available to store these loads. They can be picked by forklifts, by hand, by hoist or by crane. The choices you make will determine how you access the product (and how easily), how much space it takes and its safety. Here are the options:
In some operations, this is the default method. Sometimes these loads are floor-stored between bollards and a wall, or other obstructions that prevent them from rolling or falling outside the defined storage area. This method is the baseline, and it’s not pretty.
For any significant operation, this is going to slow you down, endanger people and cause inventory damage. It’s acceptable for a very low moving stock that is near to its processing machinery or otherwise in a niche somewhere that isn’t expected to grow.
A good majority of these loads are stored on cantilever rack. Drive around any industrial district and you’ll see cantilever racks holding tube and pipe loads everywhere, and for good reason. It works, it’s relatively inexpensive and it’s durable.
Stacking racks are the most versatile option, but also have severe limitations.
Posted in Pallet & Warehouse Racks|
