With constant incoming product, replenishment and picking and shipping, the typical fulfillment center is a beehive of activity. When you add seasonal employees for the peak, the activity and the potential of injuries goes up dramatically.
OSHA has published a 26 page Pocket Guide on Warehouse Safety which we have found useful for clients that are reviewing workplace safety practices and policies.
There is a very real cost to lost time, insurance claims and potential OSHA fines. To assist you in thinking about how to improve your facility’s safety and prevent warehouse injuries, we have selected some of the more common causes of injuries. We offer our insight and recommendations as well as those in the Pocket Guide.
The OSHA Pocket Guide says, “About 100 employees are killed and 95,000 injured every year while operating forklifts in all industries. Forklift turnovers account for a significant percentage of these fatalities.”
Here are the OSHA Solutions:
Stacking products high is a great way to effectively utilize space in your warehouse. However, it can also create dangerous hazards in the form of falling product. Be it sloppily stored merchandise or odd shaped product, it’s important to stack smart. Pay special attention to cylindrical objects, which can easily roll off shelves and cause serious injury.
One of the major causes of warehouse injuries is the clutter that create tripping and slipping hazards for employees working in the aisles and walk paths. As we walk through warehouses we often see broken pallets, used shrink wrap and pieces of corrugated cartons lying in the path of employees.
Read Does Your Distribution Center Housekeeping Indicate Other Issues?
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, tripping, falling and slipping make up most of what it calls “general industry accidents.” Slip and fall accidents make up 15 percent of all accidental deaths, 25 percent of all injury claims.
“Falls from heights and on the same level (a working surface) are among the leading causes of serious work-related injuries and deaths. OSHA has issued a final rule on Walking-Working Surfaces and Personal Fall Protection Systems to better protect workers in general industry from these hazards by updating and clarifying standards and adding training and inspection requirements.”
Here is what we recommend you can do to prevent injuries:
A client had a pallet rack collapse from improperly stored cartons of books. It caused a domino collapse of 10 sections of racking. Fortunately, it happened on a Sunday when no one was in the warehouse. Another client had to replace over 15% of the pallet cross beams and uprights in a center that had been damaged over time by careless forklift operation.
Here is what we recommend you can do:
The repetitive strain of warehouse work creates back, leg and foot injuries. The wear and tear lifting and bending involved in the work can create lost time.
These are our recommendations for preventing injuries:
Some of the warehouses we have worked in have been extremely hot in the summer. Certainly, you can’t air condition a warehouse either.
We recommend you look at several things that can lower the work floor temperature:
No matter how much automation and technology you employ in your center, healthy employees are key to your fulfillment success.