Forklift Shock Sensor, Monitoring, Impacts & Inspections…It’s All in One

If you’ve been in operations within a facility for at least 10 years, you’ve seen all sorts of forklift safety gadgets come and go. You’ve purchased and installed the flashing blue lights, horns, shock devices, forklift shock sensor, G-force measuring devices, reflectors and so much more. After a while, the forklift looks like the bike you rode as a kid! Remember this? The flags, mirrors and wheel clickers? Maybe that’s why we never took these items off the forklift. It’s all too familiar.

Although all of these devices have a special use for forklift safety, many of the devices such as forklift shock sensor, and G-force are part of a single forklift safety solution. Does that mean you could remove these devices from your bike…er…forklift? Yes, it does.

Forklift Shock Sensor

Forklift shock sensor or other names such as forklift proximity sensor, impact sensor, impact detection sensor basically mean the same thing: detect and record any type of shock or impacts made to a product, other equipment or facility infrastructure such as walls and racking systems. They continue to be offered in all shapes, colors and sizes. But is it really necessary?

SIERA.AI automoatically includes forklift shock sensor, or what we call impact monitoring in our S2 Digital Foklift Inspection with Impact Monitoring. Do you need to have a separate device? No. Impact monitoring is tailored to what you want to measure and what information you want to collect. From our web-based graphical telemetry Dashboard, you can set the impact or force amount. Now the forklift shock sensor or impact monitoring system will begin to report on the impacts.

G-force becomes an important measurement in forklift safety. Again, G-force measurement is included in the S2 safety solution. As mentioned above, not only are we monitoring and detecting, but we’re also measuring the G-force. However, everyone has a particular threshold before they want to be notified (SIERA notifies you when impacts meet your threshold), so you set it to what you want. You want to measure 3G or more? Ok. You want to measure after 7G’s, that’s fine too. Some facilities only want to know when something is really hit hard that’s going to cause them to immediately take action on the driver’s behavior.

What to Do with the Data

It’s definitely important to collect the data, now what are you going to do with it? Are you going to take action if the impact is too great? It’s clear that if something hits a higher G-force number, this is serious and an action needs to be taken. Then comes the denial. “No, it wasn’t me,” “I didn’t hit it that hard, something else fell on it,” you know, you’ve heard it all before.

What is it that you need? Proof.

This is where putting all of this technology into one device (saving you lots of windshield space) comes in. The other part of the S2 safety solution. When the forklift operator is ready to begin their shift, the operator scans their badge or enters a PIN number directly onto the tablet. Now we know who…and when. If in the event, you suspect another person used the login information of another driver, (this is an option you can choose) you can have video or a picture taken of the individual entering in their information. Now you have visual proof if the person is telling the truth…or not.

What to Do with the Data: Part 2

Now that the data is collected, the web-based Dashboard will graphically show you the results. You don’t want the graphics, fine, go to the numbers. Either way, it’s the same information and key to your decision making.
Take a look at the individual’s pattern. Is this the first time? Does it happen often? When was it? These insights will help you to decide if the operator needs tailored training on a particular skill. Bottom line, you have the data to backup your actions and allow risk to decrease in your facility.

It’s many times easier to see what we’re discussing. If you’d like to ‘see’ the Dashboard for yourself so you can quickly assess its benefits, let us know.