How Technology Improves Forklift Safety Programs by Reducing Risk and Costs

Have you taken the time to digitize forklift safety programs within your facility? In order for manufacturing, warehouse and distribution centers to adapt their current paper-based or basic electronic safety programs to take advantage of the power that technology provides, adopting a digitize forklift safety program with critical functionalities such as various levels of impact detection and the collection and analysis of data provides advantages over the current safety programs. What are the benefits to digitize forklift safety and what can it provide? Let’s take a further look.

Digitize Forklift Safety Defined

As many have come to understand the basis to digitize forklift safety, is evolving the paper-based forklift inspection found on a clipboard or a log book and creating a digital version. That digital version can be as simple as a PDF file, which takes the paper, scans it and saves it as a PDF file, to a spreadsheet or a software program where data is inputted. However, these beginning (and sometimes practiced methods) are steps in the right direction, however, it doesn’t reflect the advances in technology where the data is valuable and can be applied to making the safety program actually safer.

Benefits of Implementing Technology to Forklift Safety

To begin, the forklift safety system starts with the forklift inspection as this is essential to maintaining OSHA compliance. But a forklift safety system will go above and beyond the foundation of OSHA compliance, because you are able to make critical decisions based on the information that is collected. Let’s take a look at some of the advantages:

Usability: One of the benefits is the ease of use. For instance, the SIERA.AI S2 forklift safety solution makes it easy for operators to use as the questions are familiar, and answering consists of touching the screen for a ‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down’ or a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answering system. Both of these are universal languages.

Integrity of the Information Captured: Let’s break this out into two parts. Part One is the inspection checklist itself. The checklist digitally will be different from the paper checklist with this key aspect. Randomization. The questions on the S2 system changes the order of the questions to ensure the operator is reading the question which will lead them to a more truthful answer. Too quick to the answer increases the risk of failure and the forklift will not start without a ‘passing’ inspection.

Part Two to integrity is it takes it out of the operator’s hands completely. This is where technology is constantly on the watch, collecting information from the ongoing experiences. Meaning, if there is a slam on the brakes or a scraping sound from turning the corner too tight, the forklift safety system automatically collects and tracks that information within the online telemetry Dashboard. Anything collected by the system cannot be changed by the operator and is collected and reported in real-time.  

Risk Reduction: By understanding the true activity of the operators allows managers to create a more accurate safety program because you know where, when and who were involved in the various impacts, meaning low, medium and high impacts. By taking corrective action, which can include changing the configuration, removing the obstacle or providing tailored training, you can reduce the risk of maturing impacts that can be costly to your company and influence the morale to a place you’d rather not go.

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