Protecting Your Goods and Facilities

Last month we wrote about things that forklift operators can do to protect themselves from making injury-causing mistakes. It also included a few tips to help avoid collisions with racks and shelving. But because forklifts are so necessary to working with large amounts of inventory, they have become the number one hazard in a warehouse environment.

In an effort to reduce forklift-related accidents, there are more safety ideas that you should probably implement. Here are three products that you can use in your warehouse to make it safer for your facilities, goods, machinery, and of course, personnel.

• Floor Striping

  Using floor stripes to mark out pedestrian lanes and other zones that are off-limit to forklifts can help to direct foot and truck traffic so that they never intersect.

• Column and Post Guards

  Any vertical structure that supports racks, walkways, or ceilings should some form of guard on it to absorb impacts from accidental collisions with forklifts so that nothing falls or collapses on workers or machinery below.

• Guard Rails and Bollards

  You probably have appropriate railings where there is a risk of falls, but railings can also be used to create barriers to separate your forklifts from areas that they don’t need to enter. Bollards can provide the same protection. They should be anchored securely to the floor and need to be spaced close enough together that a forklift cannot fit between them.

Take the time to walk through your warehouse and make note of any areas that could benefit from extra safety equipment. Using these precautions as well as the tips from last month’s article, you can make your workplace safer for everyone and everything.