Forklift Fleet Management – Safety Uncovers New Savings
If you have a fleet of forklifts, you probably have a forklift fleet management solution. By doing so, you’re always trying to find little ways to reduce costs and improve operator productivity. For instance, fleet managers are trying to determine which forklift is best for certain tasks, planning for peak periods and working to ensure the operator isn’t wasting time searching for a forklift to begin his shift.
But why isn’t safety considered as a way to reduce costs and improve efficiencies?
Forklift Fleet Management: Inspection Reports
We’ve heard time and time again the importance of forklift inspection reports for OSHA compliance. However, are we really doing something with the information? Probably not, because the information is on paper. Fleet managers can scan through the book searching for maintenance issues, but that’s about it.
The only way that information can become useful is if it’s digital. The information gets collected over time making it easy to identify trends, patterns or issues. It allows you to understand the life of the fleet or individual forklift. This will give you the right information for worker and forklift productivity, efficiency and cost savings.
Remember: The SIERA.AI inspection checklists questions can be presented on a randomized basis. This makes the operator pay attention to each question and the answers they’re giving. Your data capture becomes more valuable.
Forklift Fleet Management: Communication Tool for Facility Issues
This example comes directly from a customer of SIERA.AI. A food company just started to use the S2 Digital Inspection with Impact Monitoring safety solution. They took their OSHA questions and digitized it all. However, they did add a couple of questions of their own and included a final question that asked if they have anything else they would like to share with their manager.
The forklift operators did.
They shared their observations beyond the forklift. They reported on spills, racking damage, anything that was out of place. How would this help your operation?
Forklift Fleet Management: Communicating Failed Inspections
How many times has an operator got on a forklift and started to work with a forklift that did not pass inspection? But because it’s on paper, they just kept on going. SIERA.AI hears this all the time. Companies we work with want to know a forklift failure right away, not at the end of a shift. They’ve reported further damage done to the forklift resulting in a decrease in efficiencies and higher repair costs.
What happens if the fleet manager and even the maintenance manager knows right away? That’s what the S2 provides…immediate email notification to 1, 2, 100 people. Up to you. When fleet managers and maintenance managers know of a failed inspection, downtime of any forklift is minimal allowing the forklift to be back in action at peak performance.
Forklift Fleet Management: Incident Reporting
Does a forklift driver really want to report an incident? Report on what they would consider a bump, but in reality, there’s damage done to the wall, floor, racking system or product? Instead of each forklift driver determining what they consider to be an incident, it should be the same across the board based on the fleet managers criteria.
Again, this is where digitization comes in.
Yes, there are plenty of companies out there with an impact monitoring tool. That’s great. But this has to do with what information you want to collect. SIERA.AI has customers that place their settings on a 7 g-force. They’re not interested in every little bump, only the big ones. Some customers have it as low as a 3 g-force. They want deeper information as to what’s going on in the facility.
This information helps you save on product damage, facility damage and forklift damage. With companies spending on average $188k per year on damages, isn’t this a huge cost saving measure?
Forklift Fleet Management: What Do You Want to Know?
Now it’s up to you. New avenues for uncovering cost savings with SIERA.AI safety solutions. There are still many other areas to discuss, we’ve only covered a couple with the S2 safety solution. Then we haven’t discussed the S3 with Pedestrian Detection and S3 Slow to a Safe Stop.
Bottom line, there’s still more cost savings and efficiencies for you to uncover with our web-based Dashboard. Are you ready to save? Download our free 5-Step Safety Strategy Guide to learn how.