Making the Case for a Forklift Safety System in order to Avoid Warehouse Forklift Injury
Industrial Safety & Hygiene News recently had an article talking about how Amazon Prime Days caused more injuries to warehouse workers than any other time. “According to the Senate report, 45 out of 100 warehouses at Amazon received injuries during the 2019 Prime Day event.” The same can be said when it comes to the holidays, back to school or any other item moving event. But the point is well taken. If facilities are experiencing injuries, bumps, bruises and more, what happens when it is peak season? How can you avoid a warehouse forklift injury? Is it possible that at lease one of these risks can be reduced or averted?
How Can We Avoid Warehouse Forklift Injury?
Most other facilities are not like Amazon where the article said that this past March 2024, Amazon allocated over $750 million to safety. More of a business case needs to be made in order to convince management that the investment to avoid warehouse forklift injury is in their bottom line’s best interest. What are some areas that can be discussed with management? Let’s take a look at a few areas.
Insurance Premiums
Insurance companies regularly conduct audits on facilities ensuring safety measures are in place. Many times, these audits can take months to conduct, but be sure they do make it down to the forklift level. When they do, they may suggest getting a forklift safety system. That’s where we can come in to help. Based on their recommendation, the S2 digital checklist with impact detection can fit the need or if bigger issues are a cause for concern, the S3 pedestrian detection system is the answer to avoid warehouse forklift injury or damages to products and the facility itself. When implemented, the forklift safety system can reduce incidents to the point of zero. For instance, a customer uses the S2 forklift safety system and called us to say that the number of impacts were at zero. What’s wrong with the system? It’s not working! We went out there to investigate. The system worked fine. It was the drivers’ behaviors that changed. The incidents were an accurate number of zero.
Worker’s Compensation
There’s nothing worse than a filed worker’s comp claim. That means someone got hurt. These claims can get quite expensive for the company and cost the company in efficiency, time, talent, temporary workers, order fulfillment reduction and more. This is an opportunity to eliminate any type of worker’s comp claim for forklift injuries. What is the cost of the claim short and long term? How much savings would you have if the forklift incident didn’t occur? According to the NSC, an injury can cost on average $180k in short and long term expenses. It’s a number to start from.
Temporary Workers
During peak seasons, many companies need to bring in temporary workers or also called seasonal workers. This can also be a large investment in the hopes of turning around more orders. But if a temporary worker gets hurt because they are close to a forklift, or gets pinned because they try to cross behind a forklift, temporary workers can eat away at the profits the company just made on the extra orders. By utilizing a forklift safety system, the company can make more money as these temporary workers will be safe with the audio / visual alarms with our without the autoslow to a safe stop solution.
Contact Us!
Contact us today at sales@siera.ai or call us at (512) 817 0702.