Forklift Impact Monitoring: What’s Happening on the Facility Floor?
In this article we walk you through a typical forklift impact monitoring scenario that our customers face on a day-to-day basis and discuss common challenges and potential solutions..
When a facility manager or safety manager reaches out to a company like SIERA.AI, there’s usually a problem they are trying to solve. It’s either they had a forklift accident, almost had a forklift accident or concerned that there might be a forklift accident. In this instance, it was a concern.
Forklift Impact: The Situation
The facility manager frequently walks the production floor. It’s been a busy year as sales have continued to climb. That means the workers were moving faster, working longer hours and production statistics were being negatively affected in his three facilities.
He can’t recall why this day was different, but when he left his office to make the production floor rounds, he viewed his plant environment with a fresh set of eyes.
❌ He saw forklifts passing too close. One of the forklift drivers were pressing on or slamming the brakes. Were there impacts? If so, how many and how severe?
❌ Workers were outside of the pedestrian walking paths, again causing the forklift drivers to quickly come to a stop as they reached the ends of the aisles.
❌ Customer products were left on the aisle floors. How many near misses were there? How much damage was caused to the racking system and product due to the forklift driver unaware of the obstruction?
The more he looked around the facility, the more he knew some sort of safety solution for forklift impact monitoring was needed.
Forklift Impact Monitoring: The Investigation
The facility manager for sports and leisure equipment wanted to find a solution that will monitor and report on impacts. This way he has a better understanding from near missing to severity of impact.
After evaluating numerous forklift impact monitoring systems, there was something missing.
Forklift Impacts Carry a High Degree of Risk
The high degree of risk came with the evaluation of other safety technologies. He had found that in order for the system to work, every person entering the facility had to be ‘wired’ or wear a device. He knew that wasn’t going to happen. Would impacts be reduced? Was that going to be enough? Were people still going to enter his facility without a wearable device? He knew the answer to that question.
Reporting Impacts on Multiple Worksites
If it was himself or a facility manager at every location, he wanted to know what was going on as an entire company, then break it down by location and maybe even by a singular forklift. He found that most forklift impact monitoring safety solutions did not report the way he needed to analyze his facilities.
Forklift Impact Monitoring with SIERA.AI
He was interested in SIERA.AI’s safety solution, S2 Digital Inspection with Impact Monitoring. In most situations, companies are looking to digitize their forklift inspections. In this case, the facility manager was looking for a forklift impact monitoring system first. When he realized he can get both impact monitoring and a flexible digital checklist, in the same solution, he knew management would approve the safety solution right away.
Benefits of Impact Monitoring with SIERA.AI
✅ The SIERA.AI solution is a stand-alone system. Meaning, the S2 resides on each forklift and does not require another device to be activated.
✅ The S2 monitors around the forklift in all 4 directions. The part that was important for his environment are the settings. He has full control over the distances for the green, yellow and red zones.
✅ Any issues detected, the facility manager and any others can be immediately notified so action can be taken.
✅ The system records the impacts and their level of severity that are greater than the specified limits, and records it to the web-based Dashboard.
Going Digital for Forklift Monitoring
What makes the data valuable is the ability to look at a high level and drill down to a facility, fleet and forklift. Everything he wanted recorded, tracked and analyzed can be done. This allows him to make critical safety decisions and individualize operator training.
In addition, they now have achieved the president’s goal of digitizing more of the company’s processes. All forklift inspections are done prior to the shift capturing the information in the same web-based Dashboard. This provides greater insights into the forklift fleet and allow for immediate attention if a forklift is in need of repair or maintenance.
If you’re ready to take control of damages, accidents and your fleet of forklifts, download our free 5-Step Safety Strategy guide today so you can experience for yourself how moving trucks can now be safe in your busy facility.