Tag: Warehousing

The most Common Accidents are often the most Avoidable

When a warehouse or material handling accident is mentioned it often conjures up images of something serious, like a large rack collapse or a forklift that’s been driven off of a dock.  Though these are accidents that certainly can and do occur, they are in reality much more rare than the most common type of accident seen in warehousing – the trip (or slip) and fall.

When your employees have to physically carry materials from one location to another (locations that are often on different levels), lines of vision can get impaired making it difficult or impossible to see obstacles, spills or alterations in the surface that could lead to a nasty fall.  The potential for injury when a fall occurs, when the subject is carrying something, is greater due to the fact that the person can’t easily brace themselves for the impact because their hands are occupied.

These potentially dangerous accidents could easily be avoided if your material handlers were using equipment that was ergonomically designed for moving material rather than having to manually move it.  DJ Products carries a wide array of equipment that is safe and reliable and that will greatly lessen the chances of dangerous accidents in your warehouse.  The lifts and carts from DJ Products will quickly move material (much more than could be manually moved by an individual) and will put it in the proper position for your employees to lift.  Since the lifts are doing the work, your employees can focus and concentrate on the path they are traveling which will drastically reduce the chances of a trip or slip and fall accident.

When you can effectively eliminate the most common accidents from your work environment, you make it a much safer place for your employees.  You’ll lose less man hours to injury and increase your employee’s productivity, which can also do wonders for your bottom line.

Preventing Catastrophe

More than five thousand workers are killed on the job every year; weekly reports can be viewed on OSHA’s website detailing the individual events that caused the fatalities.  This is a very scary number, but what’s scarier than the sheer number of deaths that occurred is that many of them probably could have been prevented.

For the week ending May first (the latest week with an available report), there were nearly twenty fatalities.  One of the accidents involved an employee of a major national retailer who climbed onto a storage rack and fell while attempting to get back onto a ladder.  There are other instances on the weekly report that point to poor judgment on the part of the employee and many that occurred as a result of faulty or malfunctioning equipment.  These reports show that the proper employee training and education and the presence of properly functioning equipment that is specifically designed to handle the type of work being performed can most certainly prevent injuries and very likely save lives.

Warehouse and material handling equipment needs to be more than just fast, it needs to be reliable and safe in order to provide the best possible work environment.   The best material handling equipment is quiet, reliable and easy to use because equipment failure and overly complex controls can increase the chances for accidents and injuries.

Employees need to be properly trained on how to use each piece of material handling equipment that they will encounter while performing their job duties and they need to be well aware of all general safety procedures and practices for the workplace.

There will always be injuries in a line of work that requires plenty of physical labor and the transport of heavy materials, but with the proper education and the safest and most reliable equipment, those injuries can be kept to a minimum.

Outsourcing Logistics Expected to Revolutionize Warehousing

A shift toward logistics outsourcing could spell revolutionary change for the warehousing industry that could result in leaner, more efficient business models. That was the conclusion of logistics industry experts speaking at the recent Warehouse Educational Research Council’s (WERC) annual conference in Chicago.

“In the 20th century the common business model was a large integrated company that owned, managed and directly controlled its assets,” Andy Dishner, senior director of client solutions for TMSi Logistics, told conference participants. “But in this new century we have seen a major cultural shift toward outsourcing many key functions. It really comes down to evaluating whether logistics is your core competency.”

Damian Burke, a principal with logistics consultancy Conveying Solutions Inc., joined Dishner in urging the warehousing industry to streamline logistics. Currently, companies are forced to split their resources by handling their own logistics, an area in which they may not have sufficient expertise. Burke said many companies are turning to third-party logistics providers (3PL) to solve their logistics problems. By outsourcing logistics, companies can concentrate on their primary business and leave the logistics to experts, thus streamlining their own operations.

While recommending the use of 3PLs to handle company logistics, both Burke and Dishner reminded conference participants that they could not afford to ignore logistics management. “We realize that a lot of manufacturers realize that it could be professional suicide if the choice [of a 3PL] doesn’t work out,” Dishner said. “Relationships and measurements are key,” Burke added. “We are certainly not advocating reckless investment in systems you don’t trust.”

More Companies Going Forklift-Free

An increasing number of companies, particularly in the manufacturing, warehousing and logistics industries, are moving toward a forklift-free environment. Safety concerns and maintenance costs are the primary factors driving this major change in material handling application.

According to a recent study by the Hyster Company, a major manufacturer of forklift trucks, only 6% of end-users know their real forklift maintenance costs and few have implemented programs to reduce those costs. Over the 20-year life of a forklift, 80% of the total costs are operating expenses. Ownership accounts for only 20% of a forklift’s total cost. The Hyster study estimates that American businesses waste more than $1 billion per year in unnecessary material handling operating costs.

Far more expensive are the human loss and liability costs directly tied to forklift injuries each year. Each year, nearly 100 U.S. workers are killed in forklift accidents and another 20,000 seriously injured. Forklift overturns cause 25% of forklift-related deaths. Medical expenses, insurance costs, workmen’s compensation and lost man-hours associated with forklift accidents cost American businesses millions of dollars each year.

According to John Neuman and Larry Tyler, writing in American Machinist, a forklift-free program can have multiple benefits, including:

  • reduced inventory,
  • improved material flow,
  • reduced line-side handling equipment,
  • reduced floor space,
  • increased cycle efficiency,
  • increased floor coordination,
  • increased stocking efficiency, and
  • decreased operating costs.

On the human side, a forklift-free environment improves investor, worker and public perception of a company’s attention to safety. It improves worker ergonomics, efficiency and production and decreases expensive lost man-hours, medical, insurance and liability costs.

Next time: Implementing a forklift-free program.

SJF Material Handling Checks In

We were delighted to hear from one of our Minnesota brethren this week. Kent Powell of SJF Material Handling, Inc. in Winsted, Minnesota, just a couple of hours down the road from our home office in Little Falls, ran across our blog and dropped us a line.

SJF is a material handling equipment supplier and consultant. For more than 25 years, they’ve been providing new and used material handling equipment from their Minnesota base. Their Genesys division designs and engineers cutting-edge material handling and distribution systems. Services include customized consulting, layout/design, engineering and control programming services for warehousing and distribution-based industries.

You’ll find the SJF Material Handling Blog an interesting read and will want to add it to your list of “favorites.” Their blog focuses in large part on the steel market that provides the raw material for the conveyors, pallets, carousels, rack and other material handling products they sell. It provides readers with another level of insight into the issues that concern our industry today.

DJ Products manufactures ergonomic electric cart pullers and motorized cart pushers for the manufacturing, distribution, warehousing, logistics, automotive, healthcare, hospitality and retail industries. We specialize in ergonomic material handling solutions that eliminate the strain and resultant injury that occurs from manually pushing or pulling carts and wheeled equipment. We’re one interesting cog in the larger material handling wheel, as is SJF Material Handling. We know there are others out there and we want to hear from you.

We invite our readers and others who share our interest in material handling and its applicable industries to share your comments. Alert us to other interesting websites and blogs that we can share with our readers. Drop us a comment if you read an interesting blog post. Share your own experiences or concerns or let us know what you’d like to hear more about. Our goal in creating the DJ Products blog is to share news, information and insights about material handling. We’d love to hear from you. Drop us a line.

Keeping Up with the Trends

The world of business, and subsequently warehousing and material handling, is ever changing.  To be successful you must adapt as your customer needs change and there is never a more serious time to serve your customer as a time where the economy is suffering.  If you can’t provide the service that your customer needs, you better believe that he or she will find someone that can in an effort to serve their customer and keep their doors open.

Recent trends have shown that some businesses are being forced by the economy to move into smaller properties in an effort to cut overhead and continue operating.  Some of these businesses will require their suppliers to change from a customary “pick and pack” type supplier to someone who is willing to store materials until they are needed.

Warehouses and distribution centers who are asked to provide this service to their customers need, more than ever before, to be properly organized and capable of staging and shipping orders quickly and accurately once an order is received from their customer.  Direct shipments to end users may be necessary and the overall volume of shipments may increase causing the environment to become faster paced and more hectic.

The need for accurate and properly stocked inventories becomes crucial in this type of environment; because there is no time for error when direct or expedited shipments are required.  One way to ensure that your workers can both accurately receive and store materials and to ensure that material can be pulled and staged for priority shipments quickly is to have the proper material handling equipment available for use.

The ergonomic, battery powered carts and scissor lifts from DJ products operate quickly, cleanly and quietly for an entire shift on a single charge, allowing your employees to focus on the accuracy necessary for pulling and receiving orders rather than on the back breaking labor of manual material handling.  In order to become and stay successful your team needs to be fast, accurate and efficient and one of the best ways to achieve that level of performance is to operate with the best possible equipment.

Eliminating Overhead the Smart Way

The economy is still lagging far behind what it was a few years ago and though some industries are beginning to see some promise, logistics and third party warehouses are still struggling to stay out of the red.  In order to keep the doors open, many businesses are being forced to find a way to cut overhead because the customers just don’t have money to spend.

Many businesses are moving to smaller facilities, cutting down the inventory they stock and even cutting employees just to lower spending enough to remain profitable.  If you slash inventory, move to a smaller facility or cut employees you could be hurting your company’s ability to provide adequate service, but there is a way that you can spend less money while at the same time improving your ability to serve the customer.

Propane powered equipment may seem like the most convenient and efficient way to move material, but when you calculate the cost of fuel and tally up the frequent maintenance and repair costs you’ll see that quite a bit of your budget is being spent on this equipment that is supposed to be saving your company money.  A much more economic way to move material is with battery operated carts and lifts.

The lifts and carts offered by DJ Products are quiet, efficient and incredibly reliable and the cost of operation is far less than that of a propane powered forklift.  A single employee can easily maneuver around tight spaces with heavy loads of inventory and not ever have to worry about wasting time changing an empty fuel tank – the lifts and carts from DJ can last an entire shift on a single charge.

You don’t need to sacrifice the quality of your service, your capacity to store product or your number of employees to get back into the green – you may be to be able to cut costs and provide better service by running your operation with the right equipment.

Implementing a Forklift-Free Program

Forklift trucks are expensive to maintain and are a significant source of worker injuries and even deaths each year. The high cost of using forklifts in manufacturing, warehousing and logistics environments is pushing an increasing number of businesses to go forklift-free (see our June 11 post). Going forklift-free can reduce inventory and equipment needs, improve material flow and customer response, increase cycle efficiency and overall productivity, and decrease operating costs. At the same time a forklift-free work environment significantly improves plant safety; decreases liability concerns; and markedly decreases worker injuries and associated medical, insurance, disability and lost man-hour costs.

Implementing a forklift-free program can be challenging and will require a coordinated effort by top-level management, all affected departments, and suppliers, say John Neuman and Larry Tyler in American Machinist. They emphasize that success will require the ability to maintain “a big picture overview of the project as well as an understanding of how each department and suppliers, both internal and external, will be impacted.”

A successful transition to a forklift-free environment begins with a clarification of plan targets and goals and the identification of waste, ergonomic and safety threats. Neuman and Tyler suggest beginning by asking how operations and your supply chain will be impacted by a forklift-free system. Typical project leaders include manufacturing and industrial engineers and material logistics personnel. Input should be gathered from safety teams, production managers, line operators, tug drivers, market supply teams, your purchasing department and suppliers. Good communication, efficient information coordination, and clear assignment of responsibilities are important to success at this stage of the project, warn Neuman and Tyler.

Performing a trial run that physically traces each step of operation from the supplier to the receiving dock through assembly and back to the shipping dock allows the implementation team to uncover any potential problems before initiation. Role playing allows each individual who will participate in the new process to experience and try out the actual movements they will need to undertake in a forklift-free production. The suggestions gained from a physical dry run can provide valuable insight into operational, personnel and supplier issues that must be addressed before full implementation of a forklift-free system.

Obviously, implementing a forklift-free environment in an existing plant presents a significantly greater challenge than in a new or remodeled facility where changes can be incorporated in the planning phase. Neuman and Tyler warn that “existing plant constraints may make the best forklift-free strategy less than optimal.” Aisle widths, conveyor heights, set backs, line space, ceiling height and floor quality are among the challenges that may need to be overcome. Incremental conversion beginning with one or two work cells or a common assembly area may allow for greater success in brownfield operations. Despite the added challenges, positive results can be achieved in brownfield operations though initial cost and implementation time may be somewhat greater.

Products to Help Your Business Go Forklift-Free

There’s a growing trend, particularly in manufacturing, warehousing and logistics environments to go forklift-free (see our June 11 & 13 posts). An increasing number of businesses are choosing to replace forklift trucks with safer, ergonomic material handling products that are cheaper to own and operate. As we noted, going forklift-free can result in considerable savings in production and maintenance costs while significantly decreasing worker accidents and injuries and their associated medical, insurance, workman’s compensation and lost man-hour expenses. DJ Products can help your business transition to a safer forklift-free work environment.

At DJ Products we manufacture a full line of electric cart pullers and motorized cart pushers and tugs. Our products are ergonomically designed to eliminate the pain and strain of manually pushing and pulling heavy carts and wheeled equipment. Smaller and more maneuverable than traditional equipment like forklift trucks, walkies and riding tugs, you’ll also find our products to be less costly to purchase and maintain. Implementing forklift-free solutions with DJ Products equipment offers multiple benefits, including:

  • Decreased operating costs, particularly equipment purchase and maintenance costs,
  • Decreased floor space needed to maneuver equipment,
  • Decreased worker injuries and attendant medical, insurance, workman’s compensation and lost man-hour costs,
  • Decreased liability,
  • Increased plant safety, 
  • Increased worker morale, and
  • Increased efficiency and productivity. 

DJ Products can help you plan your transition to a forklift-free environment. We specialize in solving ergonomic material handling applications with battery-powered, walk-behind tug and tugger solutions. Many of our motorized cart products can be custom configured for adaptation to almost every heavy cart pushing or pulling application. Click here to request a free brochure or video about DJ Products’ ergonomic solutions. We also offer a free demo trial program so you can try out a CartCaddy cart pusher at your facility before purchase. Our expert Sales Engineers can discuss the details of your particular application and suggest ergonomic products that will provide the appropriate solution. Click here to contact a DJ Products Sales Engineer and begin your transition to a safe, cost effective, forklift-free work environment today.

U.S. Manufacturers Turn to ‘Insourcing’ to Save Money

Insourcing is the new buzzword in U.S. manufacturing circles. U.S. economic woes are causing many manufacturers to replace outsourcing with insourcing, an unexpected boon for American workers. The declining value of the dollar against foreign currencies, skyrocketing transportation costs caused by high fuel prices, and decreasing export demand resulting from the global economic downturn are making it more cost efficient for U.S. manufacturers to produce their products at home.

The same economic forces that sent U.S. jobs overseas are now bringing them home. Manufacturing costs in Alabama are currently running 3% below those in China, causing companies like Exxel Outdoors, Inc., which makes sleeping bags for Wal-Mart and other customers, to execute an “about face” on its production priorities. Since the Wall Street tumble, the company has hired more workers, added new equipment and beefed-up production at its Haleyville, Alabama plant, while cutting production at a joint venture in Shanghai. In 2007, 60% of Exxel’s bags were made in Shanghai. This year, the company will make more product at home than abroad and expects to produce 90% of their product at their Alabama facility by 2010.

Exxel founder and CEO Harry Kazazian is predicting a 20% increase in company revenue this year to $42 million. He credits insourcing as a major factor in his company’s success during a tight economy. Since 2005, he has seen the yuan appreciate 17% against the dollar, pushing up Chinese wages, material costs and freight costs. Kazazian says moving production from Shanghai back to Exxel’s Alabama plant just made financial sense.

“Labor is China’s advantage and our weakest link,” he said. “But they can’t compete with me on my just-in-time” production cycle. Exxel can deliver a sleeping bag from its Alabama facility within three days where shipping from China can take two months.

According to government statistics, U.S. manufacturing is contracting at the fastest rate since 2001, the last time America dipped into a recession. As countries around the globe struggle with the growing financial crisis, there has been a marked decrease in export demand. Without demand for the prodigious output that originally spurred outsourcing over the last decade, producing goods in the U.S. is becoming increasingly cost efficient. Smart companies are re-evaluating their outsourcing policies and making the switch to insourcing.