You can see some of the mistakes happening in this video. Others aren’t so obvious.
This Forklift Accident Was Preventable
February 16, 2010
by Scott Stone
Tags: warehouse safety, pallet racks, forklift safety, industrial accident
Posted in Safety & Ergonomics|
Warehouse Safety: Distracted Forklift Drivers
January 6, 2010
by Scott Stone
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|
How to Improve Order Picking without Automation
November 20, 2009
by Scott Stone
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|
Ways to Protect Overhead & Dock Doors from Forklift Damage
November 4, 2009
by Scott Stone
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|
10 Steps to Supply Chain Sustainability
July 17, 2009
by Scott Stone
The Material Handling Industry of America has posted a video that may be helpful if you are starting the process of “greening” your supply chain.
Baby steps are important, especially at the plant level. For instance, in a recent Cisco-Eagle white paper (PDF), we point out the value of energy efficient conveyor motors. A thousand feet of conveyor outfitted with energy efficient motors could cut enough energy costs over five years to pay for 90% of the cost of the equipment. Also, besides its money savings and “green” profile, you are also saving on heat, which means the equipment may require less maintenance, and endure less wear and tear. It’s a win-win.
Tags: Sustainability
Posted in Warehousing & Distribution|
Storage Efficiency: Shelves vs. Modular Drawers vs. Flow vs. Vertical Carousels
June 3, 2009
by Scott Stone
Storage systems are designed for different goals, but space efficiency is always important for growing and evolving warehouses and manufacturing facilities. Which storage equipment suits you, your application, product and needs?
Above: a visual comparison of space utilization featuring various methods. The vertical carousel provides the same amount of storage space as several rows of shelving or modular drawer storage. In this instance, the carousel saves over 1,400 square feet of floor space compared to shelving. Flow racks also compare favorably to shelving in terms of space utilization.
Tags: warehouse storage, space savings
Posted in Space Optimization & Planning|
Staged Shipments at Risk for Pilferage
May 25, 2009
by Scott Stone
When things are staged at the dock, whether inbound or scheduled to be picked up, they’re particularly at risk for pilferage.
Any operation that stores, ships or receives valuable items is at risk of being hit – or is already being hit to some degree. Thieves working at a shipping dock may simply wait until after a supervisor finished checking outbound shipments and add more to them before they depart. Since the shipments can sit on the docks for 90 minutes or more, pilferers have time to work on this. And it’s extremely difficult to detect. When thieves place extra cases onto staged pallets and those can ship out on trucks driven by colluding drivers.
Tags: security, Industrial Security, inventory control
Posted in Security|
What’s the Most Useless Space in your Warehouse?
May 20, 2009
by Scott Stone
Next time you’re standing there wondering where you’re going to put an inbound shipment while your dock is stacked with empty pallets, look at those doors (or at the void above them)Â —Â the copious space between the top of the doors and the ceiling is unused. Multiply each door by that amount of space, and in many operations, we’re talking serious amounts of unused square footage.
The easy solution: find a use for it with over-dock-door storage. You can’t really rack heavy stuff up there without some significant structure. The best thing to consider is empty pallets, which take up a ton of room and are relatively lightweight. And usually, they’re all over the floor and always in your way. Empty pallets clutter up the shipping & receiving docks or can take up positions in your racks that would be better suited to full pallets of finished goods or incoming shipments.
Tags: space savings, industrial safety, dock doors, pallets, warehousing, Material Handling, Pallet Rack
Posted in Space Optimization & Planning|
More with Less: That’s Material Handling
April 27, 2009
by Scott Stone
Achieving more with less is a core goal of most businesses. In the warehousing and industrial world, that means building more, shipping more, doing more – controlling more – with fewer resources. The typical issue is labor in many of these operations. It takes people to run a shipping operation, and plenty of them.
“In economically challenging times like now, you’re being asked to produce more per person than ever,” said Cisco-Eagle’s CEO, Warren Gandall. “You’ve probably had to let people go. You may have shut down some areas, cancel contracts, cut a shift, and take the steps necessary to emerge from this downturn. But the big question is, how do you emerge stronger?”
Tags: warehouse productivity, labor costs, Material Handling, lean manufacturing, supply chain operations
Posted in Material Handling|
Gravity Conveyor: How Many Skatewheels do You Need?
March 6, 2009
by Scott Stone
Gravity skate wheel conveyor is probably the most economical conveyor option around for quick, portable movement of lightweight boxes, totes, or trays.
You see it used in shipping & receiving areas, in assembly operations, or as a transitional piece between workstations and powered conveyor lines. You can even slap casters on it for a conveyor that can be rolled in & out of use areas. We even plug it into gravity flow racks to create heavier-duty, FIFO flow storage.
For such a simple piece of conveying equipment — in fact the simplest — errors can and do crop up when it’s ordered incorrectly.
Tags: Conveyor, warehousing, Material Handling, Hytrol
Posted in Conveyor Optimization|