ergonomics Archives - DJ Products

It’s Time to Learn About Ergonomics in the Warehouse as an Injury Prevention Protocol

Make Work a Little Easier on Yourself – Ergonomic Designs In the Workplace are the Future.

Our battery-powered tugger carts are ergonomically designed to prevent carpal tunnel syndrome and other injuries caused by repetitive motions. How much do you know about ergonomics and the role they play in maintaining a safe warehouse?

Observing ergonomic principles allows workers to be more productive while reducing physical stress. Here’s a look at how you can put ergonomics to work in your warehouse.

What Is Ergonomics?

Ergonomics, sometimes referred to as human engineering, is broadly defined as “the study of the relationship between workers and their environment.” The ultimate goal is to design the workplace for optimum efficiency and less physical wear and tear.

Whenever possible, work motions should be centered around the “golden zone,” which refers to the body’s core between shoulders and knees. Workers should rarely, if ever, have to reach above their shoulders or below their waists.

Types of Ergonomic Injuries

Ergonomic injuries tend to fall under two categories:

– Lifting and handling injuries occur when heavy boxes, pallets and other loads are placed too high or too low.

– Overexertion injuries result from repetitive motions, such as long walks during order-picking.

Ways to Improve Ergonomics

– Slot SKUs appropriately with high-volume items placed close by.

– Install pallet flow racks so a case is ready at the point of pick.

– Use tilted pick trays for items stored higher in the rack.

– Train employees in the proper operation of tugger carts and other equipment.

– Encourage workers to report unsafe conditions or inefficiencies in workflow.

– Prioritize regular housekeeping to eliminate cluttered aisles and other hazards.

Ergonomically Designed Tugger Carts from DJ Products

Electric tugs such as our best-selling CartCaddyShorty reduce the risk of both lifting and handling and overexertion injuries. Visit our website and learn more from our helpful sales engineers.

A Focus on Ergonomics Can Prevent Warehouse Injuries

Thinking Smarter About How We Travel and Transport Never Hurts to Think About.

Warehouse and fulfillment center workers perform a number of physically demanding and repetitive tasks on a daily basis, creating a high risk for musculoskeletal injuries. Our warehouse equipment is ergonomically designed to be safer and less stressful on muscles and joints.

Create a culture of safety awareness in your warehouse by training employees to incorporate these ergonomic principles in their everyday activities.

Placing and Picking Items

– Take a position squarely facing the item’s location to avoid twisting the spine.

– Keep movements between shoulder and knee height as much as possible.

– Don’t stack carts in such a way that the field of vision is obstructed.

Packing Shipments

– Maintain a neutral posture: straight neck and back, shoulders down, elbows at right angles, wrists straight.

– Organize products and packing materials in a way that eliminates excessive stretching, twisting or lifting.

– Minimize intensity of gripping, pinching and other forces required to complete tasks such as taping and filling packages.

– Use carts, roller tables and other conveyances to limit the need to manually carry items.

Receiving and Shipping

– Don’t overload pallets. Balance loads with larger, heavier items on the bottom and smaller, lighter items on the top.

– Use mechanical assistance such as our tugs, movers and pushers to transport heavy or bulky loads, especially ones that usually require two or more workers.

– Follow proper lifting techniques: stand as close as possible with feet shoulder-width apart, bend at the knees instead of the waist, lift from the legs. Reverse these steps when lowering items.

Improve Safety and Reduce Downtime with Warehouse Equipment from DJ Products

Workplace injuries cost time and money, putting a double whammy on productivity. Let our sales engineers recommend the best electric warehouse equipment for your applications. Visit our website to learn more.

What Are the Benefits of a Focus on Ergonomics When It Comes to Trash Moving?

Have you looked at your trash room from your employees’ point of view? What looks like an efficient layout may actually be subjecting workers to undue physical stress, putting them at risk for injuries and reduced productivity.

An ergonomically designed workplace takes into account employees’ capabilities and limitations to ensure maximum performance with minimum strain. Here are some valuable benefits ergonomics can have for your company.

How Ergonomics Improves Your Workplace

Injury insurance claims have an impact on the bottom line that goes beyond the obvious. Roughly 33 percent of workers compensation costs are expended on musculoskeletal injuries, while lost productivity and other indirect costs multiply that by up to 20 times.
In addition to physical injuries, poor ergonomics can cause general fatigue and frustration. While employees might be healthy enough to work, they may be too tired and demoralized to put forth full effort.
Concern for your employees’ health and welfare promotes an overall culture of safety, which in turn improves morale. When employees feel appreciated, they’re more engaged in their work and less likely to leave.

Improve Worker Safety with a Dumpster Pusher from DJ Products

Our customers have discovered that a high number of injuries such as back and shoulder strains and pinched fingers were a result of moving bulky dumpsters up and down inclines and around tight corners. Bringing in temporary replacements unfamiliar with the job only made matters worse.

As one customer put it, using our WasteCaddyLite dumpster pusher is “like having another employee on staff.” Visit our website to learn more about how our ergonomically designed dumpster pusher can improve safety at your workplace.

The Business Case for Investing in Equipment that Prevents Back Injuries

DJ Products Waste Caddy is an Investment in Your Employees’ Health

Data from an older article stated that on average, nearly 50 workers are injured during any given minute of the work week. The American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE) published a 2002 report that workplace safety programs benefit both your company and your employees. Fast-forward to today. This data makes a good business case that using WasteCaddy dumpster movers to prevent back injuries is a wise investment.

Safety by the Numbers

In that article, workplace injuries resulted in $128 billion in losses in 1996, which equated to 25 percent of pre-tax net profits. Even in today’s business environment, indirect costs can inflate direct costs by a factor of 20. Some of these include:

• Hiring, training and paying replacement labor

• Reduced productivity

• Investigation time and implementation of corrective measures

• Absenteeism and low employee morale

• Poor reputation in the community and industry

Many of these costs can continue long after the actual occurrence of the injury.

Raising Safety Awareness

The report cited a survey showing that employers buy into the importance of heightened safety practices regarding business and human costs. The top two reasons given were the cost of workers’ compensation insurance and the “right thing to do.”

There is real-life data to support the cost-effectiveness of safety programs:

• Companies have seen a return of up to $6 for every $1 spent on workplace safety.

• After investing in their safety program, a West Virginia coal mining company saw its workers’ compensation rate drop to $1.28 per $100 in payroll, compared to a competitor’s rate of $13.78.

Reduce Back Injuries with Electric Tugs from DJ Products

Our WasteCaddy dumpster mover enables a single employee to safely and easily handle one of the more labor-intensive tasks in the workplace. Call 800.686.2651 to learn more.

Eliminating the Overexertion of Trash Removal

Full dumpsters and trash containers need to be stationed at the right place and at the right time in order to be picked up. This is critical for apartments, condos and retail establishments that accumulate trash quickly because missing a pick up could potentially create a build up of waste and unsanitary conditions. For this reason, employees are often asked to do whatever it takes to get the waste container to its destination, which could potentially compromise safety and put employees and property at risk.

The process of getting the heavy waste container, which may weigh in at a few thousand pounds or more, to its destination could involve employees having to push or pull the dumpster over several hundred feet over rough or hilly terrain. This can be a very dangerous undertaking for one, two or even three employees regardless of the weather, but the high temperatures of the Summer or the ice and snow of the Winter can greatly increase the chance of overexertion and injury.

The battery powered WasteCaddy from DJ Products lets a single employee safely maneuver a fully loaded trash container over any distance and any type of terrain with no worries at all. The very reliable and ergonomically designed waste container mover makes this job that usually requires multiple employees an easy task for just one employee.

Using properly designed equipment to maneuver heavy dumpsters and recycling bins drastically reduces the chances of injuries, while at the same time increasing productivity by allowing the job to be completed by one employee instead of two or three. The job gets done faster, easier and with less of a chance of injury or property damage and this is an optimal situation for both management and the employees.

Making Maintenance Easier in Hotels and Apartment Complexes

Working as a porter or on the maintenance crew in a hotel or apartment complex can be an excellent job with good pay that never gets boring. Depending upon the environment that you work in, your duties may include everything from snow removal in the Winter and landscaping in the Summer to plumbing, electrical and general contracting. In this line of work there is never a dull moment, but there can be some very stressful and laborious moments if you don’t have the proper equipment on hand to deal with one particularly messy job – trash removal.

Manual trash container removal, especially in complexes that have a large number of apartments, can be a very difficult process. When a wheeled dumpster gets loaded to the brim or contains some bulky items from tenants who are moving out or redecorating can get exceedingly heavy and potentially dangerous to move manually – this can put porters and maintenance crew members at great risk for injury.

In order to make maintenance crew members safer while performing this less than favorable part of their job as well as more efficient, it helps to have a motorized dumpster mover or waste container puller. The trash container movers from DJ Products allow one employee to quickly safely and effectively pull the trash container from even tight quarters and get it stationed where it needs to be for pick up.

Even a completely empty dumpster is heavy enough to pose a risk if employees are attempting to manually move it on their own. With a dumpster mover or trash container puller from DJ Products you can ensure the safety of your maintenance crew and make this task go from the least desirable on the list to one that everyone will volunteer to perform.

Electric Lift Table Puts Work Materials at Optimal Height

We all know how much faster and easier a job is when all our materials are at optimal height and within easy reach. It’s a minor annoyance when we have to lift a heavy object or stretch for tools when we’re at home doing the weekend warrior bit; but when we have to lift and stretch hour-after-hour on the job, that minor annoyance can quickly become a painful injury. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, overexertion injuries from repetitive lifting and awkward reaching cost employers an average of eight days of workers comp time per injury. That’s a pretty high price to pay for avoidable injuries.

Lifting injuries that cause pain and damage to the lower back are a leading safety issue in manufacturing, assembly, fulfillment, pick and pack, and numerous other industries. Ergonomics is the solution. Ergonomics is the science of designing equipment and tasks to safely accommodate the breadth of variety in the human work force. Ergonomic material handling equipment addresses safety issues created when workers of various sizes must perform the same work tasks. By making the individualization of work platforms possible, ergonomic material handling equipment minimizes the risk of injury from lifting, stretching and straining. DJ Products’ ergonomically-designed lift tables, scissors lifts and adjustable carts and platforms allow each individual worker to position materials at his personally-optimal work height.

Unfortunately, many plant operations were set up before manufacturers realized the importance of ergonomics in protecting workers’ health and safety, increasing productivity and managing costs. Fortunately, DJ Products manufactures a complete line of mobile adjustable lift tables, scissors lifts, carts and platforms. Our compact, battery-powered, electric lifts allow workers to lift materials and perform tasks at optimal work height, eliminating injury-inducing stress and strain. Contact DJ Products for complete information. We manufacture a full line of material handling products and can design an ergonomic solution to your unique problem.

Avoiding the Number One Citation from OSHA

According to statistics released in publications for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the number one reason for citations in warehouses across America is the forklift. This makes perfect sense if you consider that more than 100 individuals die each year as a result of forklift related accidents and that nearly 100,000 people are injured in forklift incidents every single year.

If your employees, even ones that have been driving your forklift for a substantial period of time, don’t closely adhere to the proper safety guidelines when driving, they are putting themselves, other employees and your entire operation at risk. Forklifts can be a huge asset to the warehouse and material handling environment, but only if they are used in a consciously safe manner. Many forklifts are also loud and run on combustible fuels, which can add another element of risk to operation and storage.

Though forklifts have many potential benefits, if you run a warehouse or distribution center, there may be safer and easier alternatives to your material handling needs. Battery powered carts from DJ Products create no noise pollution and operate free of combustible fuels – they are powered by a long life battery that can easily handle an entire, fast paced shift on a single charge, making them much more efficient and much less expensive to operate than a traditional forklift.

Keeping your employees safe is integral to running a successful business and the battery powered carts from DJ Products are designed with employee safety in mind. All carts are ergonomically designed to prevent over use injuries and the overall operation is so simple that a single employee can transport heavy loads safely with very little physical effort. This gives your employees the power to perform work as quickly as they could with a forklift, without the potential hazards often associated with forklift operation. By trading in the biggest risk of employee injury for a much safer alternative you can greatly increase your company’s overall productivity while at the same time reducing risks to your valuable employees – that’s a winning situation for everyone.

Ergonomic Material Handling Equipment Meets Needs of Multi-Generational Workforce

Finding, training and keeping qualified workers is slated for discussion at the Material Handling Industry of America (MHIA) annual conference NA 2010 scheduled for April 26-29 (see our January 4 post). The conference will devote two educational sessions to managing the supply chain workforce:

How Industry is Changing Material Handling Training and Education will focus on the demanding skill sets now necessary to perform even entry-level jobs in highly sophisticated, automated warehouses, distribution centers and fulfillment houses.
Building the Workforce of Tomorrow will focus on the challenge of integrating multi-generational workforces successfully as baby boomers and the knowledge they harbor leave the industry.

The move toward more automated supply chain operations and the increasing sophistication of the technology that drives them presents a considerable workforce challenge for supply chain managers. Technology is necessitating a more highly skilled supply chain worker making it difficult to find suitable workforce candidates among the industry’s traditional unskilled labor pool. Exacerbating the problem is the coming retirement of skilled baby boomers who have been the backbone of the supply chain industry for decades. Supply chain managers worry that there simply won’t be enough new workers coming into the system to replace those who are leaving it. The poor economic climate has actually alleviated that part of the problem somewhat. Lost savings and pinched budgets have forced many baby boomers to return to the workforce or push retirement back a few more years.

While their expertise is welcome, the distinct physical needs of an aging workforce have thrown another wrench into the supply chain machinery. Ergonomic material handling equipment that removes the physical burden from the worker could be the key to accommodating senior workers. Adjustability allows ergonomically designed carts and tugs to accommodate workers of every shape, size, sex and physical ability, providing supply chain managers with maximum use of their workforce.

Battery Powered Tugs Position You for Future Success

The woes of the U.S. auto industry should serve as a cautionary tale for the rest of us. To weather the current economic storm, U.S. businesses must embrace the future, maintain flexibility, manage labor and rein in expenses (see our Dec. 12 post). While we certainly hope the economy improves more quickly, economic experts interviewed on CBS’ 60 Minutes last night estimate it could take as long as three years to bring the U.S. economy back to a robust state. Business decisions you make now and in the coming months could well determine whether you’ll still be around to enjoy the economic resurgence when it comes.Moving to DJ Products’ innovative, ergonomically-designed battery powered tugs and electric carts could position you to compete successfully now and into the future.

Embrace the future. President-elect Obama has made a commitment to American workers to mandate safe work environments. Backed by a Democratic Congress, material handling industry experts predict a quick reinstatement and expansion of the ergonomic workplace safety rules initiated by the Clinton administration but rescinded by President Bush. Being proactive about workplace safety not only positions you to meet future OSHA requirements, it sends a positive message to workers and can be a powerful public relations tool in an era when Americans use purchasing power to support their own political agendas.
Maintain flexibility. DJ Products’ versatile battery powered tug provides maximum flexibility to meet the changing needs of your business. From heavy-duty assembly line pushers to compact cart pushers that can maneuver around obstacles in populated corridors, our battery powered tug will grow with you to meet future challenges.
Manage labor. DJ Products’ compact, highly maneuverable, battery powered tugs and carts allow a single worker to perform tasks that often require two to three workers when performed manually. Our ergonomically-designed movers maximize worker safety, eliminating the physical strain associated with pushing, pulling, lifting and carrying tasks. Workers are able to work more efficiently, improving productivity.
Rein in expenses. Electric and battery-powered tugs are cheaper and more energy-efficient to operate than gas or diesel-fueled lift trucks. But it’s the ergonomic design of our products that will provide the greatest benefit to your bottom line. Ergonomics has been proven to reduce worker injury, reducing expensive medical, insurance, workers’ compensation, disability and lost man-hour costs. Businesses typically recoup their investment in ergonomic equipment within the first year.

To find out more about DJ Products’ innovative battery powered tugs and carts, visit our website. Give us a call and let one of our ergonomic experts show you how DJ Products can help position you to compete successfully in the future.

Tag: ergonomics