3 Cost Saving Buckets Justifying a Forklift Safety System
Are you considering a forklift pedestrian detection system for the forklifts or fleets in your facilities? You could be saving yourself a lot of money while reducing accidents. Money is mentioned first, as management is always interested in what they get back for their investment. We’ll discuss how to think about savings and how that also translates into safety savings and forklift accident prevention. Let’s take a closer look.
What is a Forklift Pedestrian Detection system?
A forklift pedestrian detection system can be defined as alerting the forklift operator to a pedestrian nearby while the operator is performing tasks. A forklift pedestrian detection system can be a simple solution where it sounds an alarm when someone, or something is behind or alongside the forklift, or it an be more sophisticated where it is based on AI technology and can identify a human from various distances.
Money, Money, Money
Management gets the request for a forklift safety system, and the first question they ask is, “how much is this going to cost me?” And of course, ‘why do we need it?’ Unless you’ve experienced a close call and know about it, or an accident, management may say we’re doing fine, all is going well, no need to spend money unnecessarily. Right?
What’s the Cost?
To begin, SIERA.AI has a blog and a company LinkedIn account where we post the latest news. Within the past few weeks, we discussed some critical cases that were settled from forklift accidents. In one case, the company settled by paying out $5M and the other, $11M. Those are for deaths. However, it’s never in the news when there is an injury. These are important to note as the spend can be the same or even greater if the person was injured. That’s because the cost isn’t a one time spend but a continual spend. So what else can be affected?
- Workman’s compensation
- Insurance premiums
- OSHA fines and more frequent visits
- Hiring of temp worker(s)
- Work disruption and possible slow down from co-workers …to name a few
As they say, an accident just takes a split second to happen.
Justifying the Cost
A forklift safety system such as SIERA.AI prevents accidents by protecting more than the worker or pedestrian nearby. The justification for safety costs occurs in three buckets:
- Pedestrian safety
- Product protection from damage and
- Facility Protection from damage and repair
Your Buckets of Savings
Since we already discussed some costs associated with pedestrians, let’s discuss instead what else it can detect. Objects. This is where your product and facility savings come in. The SIERA.AI forklift safety system separately detects objects from pedestrians. Say for instance, your forklift turns the corner and hits the racking system. Not only does it scratch up and dent the forklift, it weakens the racking system, reducing what the weight or load the racking system can handle. Potentially causing it to collapse. The cost of getting a third party out to fix the racking isn’t cheap.
In another instance, the forklift can hit another piece of equipment. It can be a mobile asset such as a cart or another forklift, or the equipment can be a conveyor, a workstation, water fountain or ladder. The cost of these little bumps and bruises adds up quickly, that on average, a company spends $100K to $200k per year in EACH of these buckets. Cost savings you normally wouldn’t get.
Take a look at the SIERA.AI S3 forklift safety system and ‘see’ all of the savings you can get. We barely touched the surface.
Contact Us!
Contact us today at sales@siera.ai or call us at (512) 817 0702.
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