OSHA Changes Coming by October 1: Are Your Forklifts Ready?
Back in May of this year, OSHA sent out a news release discussing its plans to restructure workplace safety. This plan includes a new regional office located in Birmingham, Alabama overseeing a bunch of states including Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, the Florida Panhandle. Birmingham has been put on the map as a growing area as food processing, construction, heavy manufacturing and chemical processing grows and expands. With that growth comes hazardous work in these environments and OSHA has decided to take a more active watch.
There are other changes as well. OSHA states in the release that they are planning to merge Region 9 and 10 together into a new San Francisco Region to manage costs more effectively. In addition, and this one makes great sense, is to remove the label of the regional numbers, and rename them by the main city name such as Dallas Region, Boston Region, Chicago Region, Denver Region and so on.
What Can Companies and Safety Professionals Do to Prepare?
With increased attention and scrutiny, especially in the Birmingham Region, there are numerous areas that safety professionals will need to focus on. For this article, we’re going to focus on the electronic forklift checklist for lift trucks.
If you haven’t already started to change from the manual forklift checklist to an electronic forklift checklist, now is the time to get that started and done. One of the easiest, and fastest ways is with a forklift safety system by SIERA.AI. The forklift safety system automatically contains a telemetry Dashboard where all of the digital information is stored for analysis and change.
What is the Electronic Forklift Checklist?
As you know, your paper checklist is that paper. Nothing changes, nothing gets analyzed and therefore nothing really changes. The electronic forklift checklist automatically comes up onto the tablet after the forklift operator passes its credentials and logs in. The forklift safety system will automatically know which electronic forklift checklist to bring up for that particular asset. This means you can change, edit or alter the questions by deleting them, creating new ones or editing what exists. The answers to the questions are stored in the telemetry Dashboard.
What is the Electronic Forklift Checklist?
As you know, your paper checklist is that paper. Nothing changes, nothing gets analyzed and therefore nothing really changes. The electronic forklift checklist automatically comes up onto the tablet after the forklift operator passes its credentials and logs in. The forklift safety system will automatically know which electronic forklift checklist to bring up for that particular asset. This means you can change, edit or alter the questions by deleting them, creating new ones or editing what exists. The answers to the questions are stored in the telemetry Dashboard.
What is the Pass / Fail?
If the answers are completed properly, the system will tell you if you pass or fail the pre-shift inspection. If not, then the forklift will not start, and automatic notifications go out to one, two or one hundred of the contacts that need to know. Of course, not the hundred, but you get the point. If it passes, that is recorded as well. The contents of the information is then kept for analysis purposes in order to maximize the life of the forklift. Wouldn’t it be nice if you would keep the forklift for an extra year or three from the standard 5 year lift of a forklift? You can with a forklift safety system.
But, There’s More!
As turning the manual checklist to an electronic forklift checklist is good, but there’s more. The forklift safety system will also track impacts of all sizes, small, medium and large impacts. By tracking these impacts, you will begin to have an understanding of what’s going on in the facility and take corrective action.
Contact Us!
Contact us today at sales@siera.ai or call us at (512) 817 0702.