Protecting Your Workforce from Heat Stress and Strain
As an experienced industry expert in forklifts, warehousing, and logistics, I have seen firsthand how hazardous heat can impact productivity, safety, and employee well-being. With summer temperatures soaring, now is the critical time to evaluate your forklift fleet and warehouse operations to prevent costly heat-related productivity losses.
Recognizing the Risks of Occupational Heat Exposure
Extreme heat is a serious threat to worker health and safety, with the potential to cause a range of dangerous heat-related illnesses like heat stroke, heat exhaustion, and heat cramps. Beyond immediate medical emergencies, heat exposure can also impair physical and cognitive performance, leading to a rise in workplace accidents and injuries.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, occupational heat exposure claimed the lives of 43 workers in 2022 alone. Thousands more suffered from heat-related injuries and illnesses, many of which likely went unreported. These staggering statistics highlight the critical need for comprehensive heat illness prevention measures in warehouses, distribution centers, and other settings where forklifts are utilized.
Adapting to Summer’s Hottest Demands
The summer season brings a unique set of challenges for forklift operations. Extreme temperatures, high humidity, and direct sun exposure can quickly lead to dangerous heat stress levels, compromising both worker safety and productivity. Here are some key considerations for adapting your forklift fleet and warehouse practices to the summer heat:
Upgrade Forklift Cooling Capabilities
Equipping your forklift fleet with the right climate control features can make a significant difference in operator comfort and performance. Consider upgrading to models with enclosed cabs, air conditioning, and other cooling enhancements to create a more comfortable work environment. Ensure that all HVAC systems are properly maintained and functioning at peak efficiency.
Implement Robust Hydration and Rest Protocols
Access to ample drinking water and adequate rest breaks are essential for mitigating heat stress. Develop clear protocols for providing workers with frequent hydration opportunities and shaded, climate-controlled rest areas. Encourage employees to stay hydrated and take breaks as needed, rather than pushing through the heat.
Optimize Work Scheduling and Task Rotation
Restructure work schedules and task assignments to minimize exposure to the hottest parts of the day. Rotate workers between indoor and outdoor tasks, or lighter and more physically demanding forklift operations. This can help prevent a single individual from bearing the brunt of the summer heat.
Enhance Employee Training and Communication
Educate your workforce on heat illness symptoms, first aid, and preventive measures. Empower employees to recognize the signs of heat stress in themselves and their colleagues, and to take immediate action. Clear, frequent communication of heat safety protocols is vital for ensuring widespread adoption.
Monitor Environmental Conditions Closely
Invest in equipment to continuously monitor environmental factors like temperature, humidity, and heat index in your warehouse. Use this data to trigger heat-related safety protocols, adjust workloads, and ensure your preventive measures are effective.
Prioritizing Employee Health and Productivity
Beyond the immediate risks to worker safety, excessive heat can have a significant impact on overall productivity and performance. A cool working environment demonstrates care and consideration for employees’ welfare, fostering a positive work culture and improving employee retention.
By investing in measures to keep warehouse employees cool, businesses can enhance productivity, reduce absenteeism, and create a more supportive and conducive work environment for their teams. Choosing the right combination of equipment based on your warehouse’s size, layout, climate, and specific cooling needs can significantly improve working conditions during the summer months.
Visit OSHA’s Heat Illness Prevention website to learn more about heat awareness and what you can do to prevent heat illness in your workforce this summer. Having a happy, healthy workforce is key to long-term productivity and performance.
Forklift Technology Spotlight: Walkie Riders for Efficient Summer Operations
A walkie rider, often referred to as a rider pallet jack or rider pallet truck, is a type of electric material handling equipment used for transporting and moving pallets in warehouses and distribution centers. It is designed to be ridden by the operator, providing several advantages over a standard electric pallet jack, which is typically operated by walking behind it.
Benefits of Walkie Riders
Increased Productivity: Walkie riders allow operators to cover more ground in less time, improving overall material handling efficiency. The ability to ride the equipment reduces fatigue and enables operators to work longer before needing a break.
Enhanced Operator Comfort: Walkie riders provide a more comfortable and ergonomic riding position, which is especially beneficial during hot summer months when workers are already dealing with heat stress. This can lead to reduced fatigue and greater job satisfaction.
Improved Maneuverability: The compact design and tight turning radius of walkie riders make them highly maneuverable, allowing for easy navigation through tight warehouse aisles and around obstacles.
Versatile Applications: Walkie riders are well-suited for a variety of material handling tasks, including loading/unloading trailers, transporting pallets between staging areas, and order picking.
While walkie rider pallet jacks offer numerous benefits, it’s essential to consider your specific material handling needs and the layout of your facility when choosing between a walkie rider and a standard electric pallet jack. Walkie riders are well-suited for applications where speed, efficiency, and operator comfort are critical, but they may not be the best choice for all warehouse settings.
For more information on our CLARK electric pallet jacks, electric walkie riders, stackers, or any other material handling product, please contact us at 800-322-5435.
Sweepers and Scrubbers: Maintaining Clean Floors for Safer, More Productive Forklift Operations
Clean floors have many benefits besides improving safety. Your manufacturing and warehousing operation benefits in other ways, including:
- Enhanced Forklift Performance: Smooth, debris-free floors allow forklifts to operate at peak efficiency, reducing the wear and tear on components and extending the lifespan of your equipment.
- Improved Product Quality: Eliminating dust, dirt, and debris can prevent product contamination, protecting the integrity of your inventory.
- Increased Facility Aesthetics: Well-maintained floors create a more professional, organized appearance that can positively impact employee morale and customer perceptions.
- Reduced Maintenance Costs: Proactively cleaning floors can prevent the buildup of debris that can damage forklift tires and other components, leading to decreased repair and replacement costs.
Remember that the specific benefits and effectiveness of sweepers and scrubbers may vary based on factors such as the size of your warehouse, the type of flooring, the level of foot and vehicle traffic, and the nature of the operations carried out within your facility. It’s important to select the appropriate equipment and maintenance routine that suits your specific requirements.
For more information on how to optimize your warehouse floors for forklift safety and productivity, visit www.forkliftreviews.com.
Minimizing Winter Energy Costs in Your Warehouse
Winter is upon us, which means increased energy expenses to keep your warehouse warm and productive. While Southern California is not as effected by colder weather as our friends on the east coast, we will still be turning on the heat and anything we can do to minimize the impact of that on our bottom is helpful to a profitable 2020. The following steps are five of our top recommendations for reducing energy consumption without turning down the thermostat.
Ensure Efficient Heat Generation Processes
Whatever thermal system you use, now is the time to make sure it is up to date with regular maintenance. Keeping your system in good operating order extends its life and ensures that it operates at optimal efficiency. Meanwhile, a poorly maintained system—particularly a gas-fired one—can pose a significant safety risk.
Another area of concern is the quantity, type, and location of your heating units. If you have made any changes to your warehouse configuration since your HVAC system was installed, now would be a good time for consultation. Technology advances quickly, and you want to be sure your HVAC system is up-to-date with current technology to ensure efficiency and effectiveness.
Maintain Proper Air Circulation
We all know that heat rises, and 20-degree temperature variances between the warehouse floor and the typical 40-foot ceiling are not uncommon. Circulating warmth to the floor can save hundreds—if not thousands—of dollars each month during the winter. The best means to accomplish this is through large industrial ceiling fans.
Determining what size, how many, and where to install industrial ceiling fans is our specialty. Fans can save up to 30 percent of your heating costs and deliver positive ROI in less than two years in many applications. Contact us for more information on fans and how many you might need to improve your energy circulation.
Retain as Much Heat as Possible
If you operate a warehouse, you have doors—very large doors. Although it is impossible to eliminate heat exchanges with cold outdoor air, you can take specific steps to significantly reduce it. These steps are more cost-effective than you probably expect.
Insulated dock panel doors can help retain warm air. However, depending on the number of dock positions, investment in them can be prohibitively costly. Instead, consider an insulation kit for each door. Insulation kits are less expensive, provide an R-Value of 6.81, and are easy to install.
Gaps around your dock doors can also cause significant heat loss. Inspect the top, bottom, and both sides of each door. If you see daylight, you are losing energy. Weather stripping kits are available to fill these gaps. The kits include weather stripping for the perimeter of the door as well as a 5-inch double-loop bottom rubber astragal to ensure that doors close tightly at the bottom. In addition to preserving heat, the seals keep bugs and other debris outside your warehouse facility.
Caulking and sealants available at your local DIY big box store can help improve retention of heat dramatically over the winter.
Dock seals or shelters are imperative for preventing tremendous heat loss during trailer loading and unloading. If you are running a high-traffic operation without seals or even with worn seals, tens of thousands of expensive BTUs can blow out the door each winter day. If your seals or shelters are in good condition, be sure each tractor trailer is backed up tight against them before the dock doors are opened.
One final area we recommend assessing is your dock leveler. If you use pit-mounted levelers, it makes sense to ensure that the side and rear seals are in good condition. Worn seals on your dock leveler result in air infiltration. We can inspect your levelers and seals, and service or replace any that are worn.
Install Windows and/or Skylights
Although it is not always practical depending on the construction of your warehouse (or if you own or lease it), we certainly recommend investigating ways to improve the natural light and heat generated by the sun! Strategically placed windows or skylights can dramatically reduce your warehouse energy costs during the winter not only by using the sun’s energy for heat, but also by improving the natural lighting in your warehouse. This reduces your reliance on lighting fixtures and further reduces your energy costs.
Using retractable blinds allows you to close the windows during the summer months, which reduces heat generation when it is not required. And if you facility has windows, consider replacing them with energy efficient windows that can provide better heat retention and help keep the cold air out. If your windows are more than 10 years old, chances are you can improve energy consumption with new, more efficient windows.
Use Air Curtains or High-Speed Doors to Segment Your Warehouse Energy Needs
Some areas of your warehouse may not be used by employees often, who do most of their work in other areas of your warehouse. These low-use areas can be kept much cooler than the areas that employees use most. Air curtains and high-speed doors are excellent ways to keep the two areas temperature controlled while dramatically decreasing your energy consumption.
Winter can be an expensive time for warehouse operators, but the right steps taken the right way can significantly reduce the negative impact to your bottom line. We can help you find the right products to ensure you’re maximizing the use of energy in your facility during the colder winter months. Contact us to speak to one of our representatives.
Fostering a Culture of Safety: Keys to Reducing Workplace Incidents and Accidents
Since 1970, OSHA has worked to create a safer workplace for all employees, and their mission has been very successful. However, accidents still happen, and not only at companies willfully violating OSHA standards. Sometimes safety goes beyond meeting standards due to unique circumstances in certain operations. The following are a few approaches to safety that have helped both large and small companies to achieve better workplace safety, fewer incidents and accidents, lower costs, more productivity and better workplace attitudes.
Safety is integrated with company mission
Safe companies put as much emphasis on doing things safely as on doing them productively. From day one, every employee knows they are working for a company that would rather they do their job safely than quickly. These employees will lockout a piece of equipment when something goes wrong, will replace light bulbs that need it instead of ignoring them and will report unsafe behavior or unsafe conditions.
Training never ends
Employees are involved in ongoing training – how to lift more safely, how to sit properly in a chair, how to operate a certain piece of equipment and so on. Your business is fluid: things change; equipment changes; and equipment, building space and employees are added. As your conditions change, your training must address these changes. Training for the safest work environments is never a one-time event or a two- or three-day training initiation. It is an ongoing pursuit of the safest possible work facility. It should be a goal of all employees to see that their coworkers go home safe every night.
Involvement at all levels
While involvement in a safe work environment must start from the corner office, the mission and strategy it is also important to ensure that every employee knows that they are involved and responsible. It is a good idea to create safety teams for every facet of your business, to revolve people in and out of those teams, and to have them conduct frequent facility or department reviews to identify potential threats. The most successful companies have reward systems for reporting anything that could be a potential threat, even if it is as minor as a sharp corner on a coat rack. This keeps all employees engaged in creating a safe work environment.
Accountability
Once you have established your safety mission and mapped out your strategy, everyone involved must be held accountable. No one can shirk their safety responsibilities. If a sharp corner on a coat rack is missed and someone gets cut, find out why no one noticed. Are they doing regular inspections? If safety standards are not being met, it is the leadership’s job to find out why and fix it. Everyone must know that if an accident happens on their watch, it must be accounted for and a plan must be designed to ensure that it will not happen again.
A truly safe, productive and profitable workplace is attained through ongoing efforts, and these are just a few of the major traits of successful organizations. We encourage you to seek the assistance of OSHA, NIOSH or other private safety consultants to help you organize and strategize your safety plans. If there is anything we can help you with in regard to your equipment and its operators, please contact us. We would be happy to assist you!
Mitigating the Impact of Flu Season on Workplace Productivity
Each flu season in America, between 5% and 20% of American’s contract the flu. This leads to 111 million lost productive work days, which costs American business approximately 7 billion dollars! In addition, the direct costs (doctor’s visits, medication, hospitalization) cost individuals over 4.5 billion dollars a year! Source: CDC
Whether it’s in your accounting department or forklift operators, you want to limit an outbreak at your company and contain any outbreak that does occur. The effects of lost productivity can have a great effect on your ability to deliver products and services and provide customer service, which can lead to a negative impact on your bottom line. But there are things you can do to lower the risk at the department level and facility level.
It all starts with planning and communication. The effects of flu season can be dramatic if left unaddressed. But developing a plan to deal with the flu and spreading education before the flu spreads itself around your facility will help you maintain your business productivity during this flu season.
Our focus is frequently on productivity, and this is not always about equipment and processes. Sometimes peripheral components can have an impact on our bottom lines, and it is important to us to serve as your partner in addressing all facts of productivity. We encourage you to visit the flu.gov site to learn more.
The Rise of Electric Forklifts: Powering the Future of Materials Handling
Slowly but surely, electric forklifts are carrying more of the daily material handling load. Some of the reasons are obvious, but it is clear to most that eventually we must do more than continue to burn fossil fuels in the transportation of our products.
We still have a ways to go before electric forklifts can perform all the tasks as well as their LP forklift counterparts. However, most forklift manufacturers are improving performance and outdoor durability with each passing year. It is only a
