4 Avoidable Costs Caused by a Forklift

Forklift impacts affect four key line items that you’d like to reduce and keep under control: Worker’s Comp, equipment damage, product damage and facility damage. It’s great to know when the forklift impacts are occurring, but it’s even better to prevent them altogether. All four areas are costing the company valuable revenues as spending will be necessary to repair the forklift, replace the damaged product, and repair damage to the facility as well as the other equipment. Sometimes an accident or forklift impact can affect all four areas at one time. Now that’s costly. Let’s take a look at forklift impacts and what can be done to minimize the issue and costs together.

What are Forklift Impacts?

Forklift impacts is when a lift truck accidentally strikes another object or person in one of three ways: low impact, medium impact or high impact. These forklift impacts can cause injury or death to a worker or pedestrian, damage to other equipment, products or the facility itself. By using a forklift safety system, forklift impacts can be measured and recorded, or can be avoided altogether with the use of a pedestrian and object detection.

Cost of Worker’s Comp

Cost of a single forklift accident is estimated at $188,000. Not only does the initial forklift impact cost, but the long term costs as well. When a forklift impact occurs and an injury is involved, you have the initial costs to pay. However, there’s long term costs of treatment for the individual and potential loss of productivity to name a few. This can last years from the initial date of injury.

Solution:  This can be solved with a forklift safety system that detected pedestrians. The SIERA.AI forklift safety system detects pedestrians and objects separately. When a worker or pedestrian is within the defined ‘danger zone’ audio and visual alarms go off alerting the driver that a person is nearby. The visual is a symbol of a human so the driver understands it is a person and take action now.

Equipment and Product Damage

There is a cost associated with forklift impacts on other equipment in the facility as well as your products or your customers products. If the forklift hits another piece of equipment, it can take another forklift out of service, or it can affect a manufacturing line itself. Product damage occurs all too often especially if it’s sitting on the floor or not fully secure on the shelves, and the forklift is unaware that it’s there. The cost of the damage adds up very quickly cutting into the profits of the company.

Solution: This can also be resolved with a forklift safety system that detects objects. Because of the AI technology that SIERA.AI uses, we have the ability to detect pedestrians separate from objects. When an object enters within the defined ‘danger zone’, an audio and visual alarm goes off alerting the driver that an object is within close proximity. The visual symbol is of a box so the forklift driver understands that it is an object and take action to avoid the unnecessary damage.

Facility Damage

Facility damage caused by forklift impacts can be a costly one. Facility damage can include racks and walls. When part of the facility is damaged, the integrity of the infrastructure is compromised and the load it takes is reduced. This can cause the facility to weaken and problems can occur furthering the cost of damage and repair.

Solution: As we just discussed in product and equipment damage, the same forklift safety system will also detect the facility itself in order to avoid hitting the rack, walls or any other part of the facility. It again will get the audio and visual alarm with the ‘box’ symbol to ensure the driver knows what’s nearby.

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Let’s discuss what’s going on in your facility in order to help avoid accidents and unnecessary costs associated with it.

Contact us today at sales@siera.ai or call us at (512) 817 0702.