3 Ways to Enhance Your Warehouse Rack Safety
Working environment safety is an essential matter to consider, one constrained to meet the moving necessities of laborers, businesses, regulators, and visitors alike. All employees need a safe working warehouse environment yet setting up a safety program is a challenging matter.
Injuries in stockroom and warehouse spaces arrive in various forms, ranging from accidents by forklifts to lost-time by falling or overexertion physical injuries on the opposite end.
Distribution Center (DC) and Warehouse Rack Safety Risks
Safety risks in warehouses and DCs can be classified into two categories, dynamic risks and inactive risks.
Dynamic Risks:
These risks are related with the movement of forklifts, people and materials across the warehouse. The dynamic risks include:
- Workers hit by a forklift.
- Rack structure struck by forklift.
- Dirty and wet floor.
- Material fall brought about by forklift.
Inactive risks:
These risks are due to environment and outside factors. The inactive risks include:
- Rack displacement or material fall because of seismic tremor.
- Inadequate maintenance of racks.
- Material fire.
Enhancing Warehouse Safety
There are several measures that both employers and employees can take to ensure the safety of their warehouses. Below are three suggested ways to accomplish that:
1. Training
Employees should undergo special training related to working around warehousing and equipment. These measures include warning signs and training about:
- Forklift activity (for fork truck drivers).
- Forklift and material handling care (for laborers working with materials and dealing with forklifts).
- Rack stacking and offloading (covering types of materials, sizes, acceptable loads, and shapes).
- Spill reaction (actions to take in case of a material spill).
- General housekeeping.
- Rack assessments: Racks should maintained and frequently assessed to ensure that they can handle the weights that they are designed to carry.
2. PPE (Individual Defensive Gear)
Laborers should wear properly fitted gloves, hard hats, high-perceivability vests, and security toe shoes while working in warehouses. Certain environments may require additional protective gear and PPE requirements such as full-length jeans and shirts, back supports, hearing protectors, or on-body flickering lighting.
3. Bump Guards and Bollards
Bump guards, bollards and rails are used to help in protecting against forklift strikes with the rack structures. These are installed around exposed sides and corners of the racking structure. Bottom companion rails may also be an option for drive-in racking to keep forklifts aligned.
Companies should take the necessary safety measures such as educating and training its employees to promote the highest safety measures in their warehouses and distribution centers.
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