Forklift Safety
Forklift safety has come a long way since OSHA was founded in 1971. It set the foundation for an industry that has evolved with better forklift safety measures. However, even as forklift safety has increased in effectiveness; fatalities, injuries, and facility & product damage continues to plague the logistics industry.
Why hasn’t forklift safety devices conquered the issue?
The answer SIERA.AI believes to be the reason is this:
All of the forklift safety solutions are passive in nature. Let’s take a look at a few:
- Blue lights: A warning device that lets people know that a forklift is nearby. Is it stopping the person, or the forklift from their encounter? No.
- Seatbelts: A great safety measure for when the accident occurs. Is it stopping the person, or the forklift from their encounter? No.
- RFID tagging: Here’s a more technology-based solution. A great idea that took a step forward, but unless everyone has a wearable device and all of the technology hanging on the facility or racking system is working, and the WIFI is as well, the risk factor remains.
Is there an Answer?
At SIERA.AI, we believe there is an answer. Great business and academic minds from the University of Texas and Stanford University came together to answer this question, “Can we develop a forklift safety solution that can help a company achieve ZERO accidents?”
We started with a solution that we knew could quickly impact the forklift safety industry. Forklift inspection and impact monitoring. It’s not the silver bullet…yet…to reach zero, but it does accomplish a couple of key areas:
- OSHA compliance
- Trackable near misses
- Trackable impacts
- Customer controlled settings and notifications
- Gain actionable insights into your facility
Actional Insights
The only way you can make an informed decision is with data that tells you information that you want, and need to know. SIERA.AI’s Dashboard is a single online entity where all information is stored, interpreted and graphically represented in a way that you can take immediate action.
So far, this information will tell you where the impacts occur…the high-level impacts and the low-level impacts. Will this tell you where the risks areas are within your facility? Will it help you make changes to reduce the risk level?
When you see the product, you can answer the question for yourself.
Next Level of Forklift Safety
To achieve the next level of forklift safety is to monitor the environment around each forklift. The technology on each forklift needs to act autonomously, yet communicate as one to the single Dashboard.
Each forklift is monitoring quickly, every 30ms around a pre-defined distance. Within each distance it gathers information about its surroundings. Is there a person or object within its predefined areas? If so, it detects, informs, warns and reports its findings to the Dashboard in real-time.
Once you gather and analyze the information in the Dashboard, now you have a deeper learning into your environment. The next part of your decision making is identifying the high-risk locations and the lower-risk locations as it pertains to pedestrians, the facility and the products you make, manage and store.
The Ultimate in Forklift Safety
The ultimate in forklift safety doesn’t necessarily mean the technology needs to be deployed in 100% of the operation, its best suited in the high-risk areas where adjustments cannot be made. The technology needs to monitor, gather information and make decisions if the forklift operator fails to act…fails to make a critical decision that can cost the operators life, the pedestrians life or a high level of damage to the facility, product or other equipment.
Does the technology exist today for forklifts? Yes, it does. Does it work? Yes, it does. Is it installed? Yes, it is.
The question is… Are you ready to deploy forklift safety that actually achieves Zero accidents?
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