material handling safety Archives

5 Tips to Make Your Material Handling Operation Safer

Improve Material Handling Safety

From lifting heavy items to pushing large loads, material handling can put employees at a high risk of being injured. These workplace injuries can cost your business significant money in terms of decreased productivity and workers’ compensation. Making the following changes in your workplace can help reduce material handling risks, while also boosting employee morale.

Invest in Safer Equipment

Using forklifts and similar types of equipment to pull or lift loads comes with an increased chance of accidents and injuries. A motorized trailer dolly can handle these loads safely and with greater efficiency. This helps protect your employees from potentially serious injuries in the workplace.

Provide PPE

Personal protective equipment (PPE) is an important part of keeping your staff from injuries. Gloves, eye protection, and other kinds of PPE can greatly reduce the risk of injuries as employees handle material handling tasks. Make sure your employees know how to correctly wear and use PPE on the job.

Reduce Ergonomic-Related Risks

Having to do repetitive lifting or carrying heavy items can lead to physical fatigue and a higher risk of injuries in your material handling operation. Take time to identify these risks, so you can implement measures to reduce the risk of injuries.

Encourage Employees to Report Fatigue

Employees can develop high levels of fatigue on the job due to the physical strain of material handling tasks. Over time, this fatigue can raise their risk of ending up with musculoskeletal problems and serious injuries. Provide a way for employees to report fatigue and encourage them to do so. You can then ensure that fatigued employees have a chance to rest and recover.

Minimize Vibration and Noise

Vibration and noise in a material handling environment can increase the risk of fatigue and injuries. They can also serve as distractions for employees, which also raises the risk of accidents. Use equipment that helps keep vibration and noise to a minimum, such as softer wheels, in order to protect employees from workplace injuries.

If you need a trailer dolly to make your material handling operation safer, please contact DJ Products. Our team can provide you with the perfect solution for improving workplace safety.

Our Top 5 Safety Tips for Material Handling

Industrial Material Handling Safety

Material handling can be a dangerous task in warehouses. Accidents and injuries can easily occur when forklifts and similar equipment are used to move heavy loads or vehicles around. Finding ways to improve material handling, such as using motorized trailer dolly products, can boost safety in your warehouse. The following tips can help you make this task safer.

Ensure Proper Training

No matter what type of equipment your warehouse uses for moving heavy loads and vehicles, it’s important to make sure staff are properly trained. Warehouses workers should know how to use this equipment correctly and as safely as possible in order to reduce the risk of accidents. Instead of one-time training, plan continuous training to promote safety when using equipment for material handling.

Set Up Clear Pathways

Your warehouse floor should provide clear pathways for loads to be moved from one location to the next. Poor planning for your warehouse floor can lead to obstructions and other challenges that make material handling less safe. Make proper floor planning part of your strategy for improving material handling safety.

Schedule Predictive Maintenance on Equipment

The equipment your warehouse workers use to move heavy vehicles and loads around can develop flaws or damage that’s hard to spot right away. Predictive maintenance on this equipment helps ensure that these problems are caught early. You can then have equipment repairs done as needed to ensure safe material handling.

Encourage a Culture of Safety

Safety is something that workers should be aware of at all times when handling heavy loads or moving large vehicles. Encouraging s culture of safety among staff helps ensure that everyone is on board with maintaining a safe work environment. All workers should be familiar with safety policies in your warehouse.

Use Remote Monitoring

Having supervisors monitor material handling on the floor can create obstructions that make this task less safe. Use remote monitoring methods instead, so that supervisors aren’t standing on the warehouse floor.

For more information about our motorized trailer dolly products to help improve material handling, please contact DJ Products. We can help you choose the right solution for better safety in your warehouse.

Repetitive Stress Injuries: High Cost to Employers and Employees

Manpower is the most significant asset of a company, so it stands to reason that it’s also one of the major expenses. When an employee is out of work for health reasons, the financial impact is twofold. There is the cost of replacing him along with the potential loss of efficiency if the replacement is less skilled or if the position simply goes unfilled. Repetitive stress injuries (RSI) account for 30 percent of missed time, making them one of the biggest workplace dangers.

Reports from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration state that roughly 1.8 million workers per year are affected by RSI, while government studies place the cost to businesses at between $17 billion and $20 billion. Employees themselves also suffer a personal financial toll. The chronic nature of RSI can lead to more serious or permanent injuries. An affected worker may be forced to take a job that pays less or pay for education and training in order to find alternate employment.

Repetitive stress injuries affect soft tissue such as muscles, tendons and joints. As the name implies, they occur from repeating the same motion or activity on a regular basis. Use of ergonomically designed equipment such as our CartCaddyShorty can greatly reduce the threat of RSI in your workplace by relieving stress and strain, making tasks easier to perform.

The CartCaddyShorty is just one of the full line of material handling tugs available from DJ Products. Contact us at 800.686.2651 to have one of our trained Sales Engineers help you find the right solution for your business.

Material Handling Safety Tips

Avoid Injury[/caption]The nature of material handling work involves a number of situations with the potential to cause injury. Large, heavy carts and other equipment are being transported through aisles that can be narrow and congested. In addition, there are often other employees moving around the same areas who may not be paying as careful attention as you are.

As the saying goes, an ounce of prevention equals a pound of cure. Being sensible and vigilant can keep you and others injury-free.

Here are some tips to promote a safer work environment:

Always check your route to make sure it’s clear of potential blockage or other hazards. Help yourself and others by keeping the workplace clutter-free.
If you’re passing through doorways, make sure there’s enough clearance. Getting your hand or fingers caught can be painful.
Wear appropriate footwear such as steel-toed boots. This is a requirement at most companies, but if it’s not you should take this precaution yourself. Heavy-duty gloves can also be useful.
Make sure the load you’re transporting is evenly distributed. If it’s stacked too high you run the risk of objects falling on you or others.
Use good posture to support your back. Bend at the knees and lift with your legs.
Ask for assistance with loads that are too difficult to handle on your own. An even better solution is using a battery-powered material handling tug. For example, our CartCaddy5WP enables one person to easily move loads of up to 10,000 pounds.

DJ Products offers a full line of material handling tugs for use in applications from hotels and hospitals to airplane hangers. Contact us for more information about how we can simplify your job.

OSHA Could Stiffen Penalties

OSHA could levy tough consequences on employers who ignore worker safety if Congress passes legislation currently under review. In legislation introduced late last year by Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, employers who disregard hazards that result in worker fatalities could face felony prosecution and stiff prison sentences. The maximum penalties currently levied by OSHA are 6 months in prison for a willful violation resulting in death and/or $70,000 for a willful violation and $7,000 for a serious violation. Hearings about the proposed legislation are being conducted by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. The bill is expected to move through Congress this year.

“Employers who ignore their employees’ safety should pay a penalty that will force them to change their negligent ways,” Sen. Kennedy said. A report issued by Kennedy’s staff titled Discounting Death: OSHA’s Failure to Punish Safety Violations that Kill Workers states that a median penalty of $3,675 was assessed for workplace fatalities last year. “Workers’ lives are obviously worth far more than that,” chided the Senator.

Each year 6,500 American workers die from workplace injuries. According to OSHA estimates, forklifts are responsible for 85 fatalities a year, 34,900 serious injuries and 61,800 non-serious injuries. An estimated 11% of all forklifts in operation in the U.S. are involved in an accident each year. Over their useful life, 90% of all forklifts will be a factor in a workplace accident. Over the past 20 years, forklifts have been the major cause of industrial fatalities and accidents in the U.S.

With stricter enforcement on the horizon, it could be prudent to consider replacing the bulk of your forklift fleet with safer, more maneuverable, ergonomic electric carts and motorized cart pushers. Reasonably-priced cart movers come in a variety of sizes designed to perform many of the same tasks done by forklifts but with increased efficiency and superior safety for workers. Power tuggers offer maximum versatility in moving loads of up to 3,0o0 pounds while cart movers can muscle heavy 50,000-pound loads. Don’t place your workers or your business at risk, click here to learn more about ergonomic electric and battery-powered carts and tugs.

Tag: material handling safety