Safer by design
October 1st 2009 The FLTA’s annual safety conference presented both the continuing risks to the materials handling sector – and some solutions to help negate them.Brendan Coyne reports
During 2007/2008, forklift trucks were involved in 27 per cent of all workplace transport accidents, according to the HSE’s Carol Grainger. This figure, she implied, could have been much worse: “We very rarely hear about near misses and the chances of them being investigated are very slim.”
Of those accidents, counterbalance trucks were involved in over three quarters of cases, with pedestrians, forklift drivers and visitors most likely to be the victims. In almost half (44 per cent) of cases, workplace layout or rules were said to be a contributing factor. In terms of fatalities, major injuries and accidents resulting in absenteeism of over three days, storage operators and drivers made up a significant proportion, begging the question: Is the industry managing its processes and risk assessments properly? According to Grainger, the answer is no.
“It’s the same people – the goods handling and storage workers – that top the injury batting averages, with the same vehicles and type of accidents involved,” she says. “Therefore risk assessments are insufficient or not carried out or managed properly, or [the sector has] just poor safety culture generally.”
But what can the industry do? Forklifts are ubiquitous – from the single truck operating in a scrap metal merchant, to the hundreds of trucks in busy distribution centres. “Forklifts may be everywhere,” says Grainger, “but that is no reason to do nothing to prevent accidents happening.”
While processes, assessments and culture are down to individual sites and organisations, the conference then presented some practical and technological solutions to improving safety.
First up was a novel approach from Luke Elmer, fresh from graduating with a BSc in Product design technology at Bristol, who as part of his course, designed a vibrating wristband and transmitter system to warn operatives when forklifts are in the vicinity. Having worked in materials handling operations prior to university, Elmer saw first-hand why so many accidents happen around forklift trucks.He also had personal contacts at the DC of a major supermarket, who told him: “Walkways are seen as a bit of a joke – nobody really sticks to them.”He also so said that, as well as obvious things such as blind corners, the constant noise and monotony make it difficult for people to be as alert as they should be. “There are a lot of trucks around all the time, so it is difficult to hear which direction they are coming from.” Elmer said that, particularly towards the end of the shift, workers “wandering around texting on mobile phones”, was another recipe for disaster.
While the ‘Vibralert’ system still has issues to iron out, the fact that Elmer, a 22 year old has designed and built a working prototype is testament to the creative thought the industry can tap to solve its problems. Elmer, an approachable, confident and clearly talented young man is now looking for R&D work, and was approached by several technology firms at the conference. He can be contacted via luke_elmer@hotmail.com.
Next up was Transmon’s Paul Sercombe, who explained the benefits of its Zone Speed Savure System, which limits trucks to certain speeds in higher risk areas, as well as providing impact data and driver reports.While unable to give specific accident and damage reduction figures at any given customer site, Sercombe said accidents were usually halved just from the system being implemented: ie, workers are aware it has been implemented, that they are being monitored and are more careful as a result.
After that Crown’s Dave Allison talked about the latest functionality added to its InfoLink truck management system. Retrofitable to any make of truck, InfoLink essentially manages all aspects of fleet management – from licences and training, to access control and pre-shift safety checks, to damage and accident reports, to fleet maintenance and repair, instantly, in real time. Allison says the system’s potential is huge, and since launching last year, is now in use at 10 clients across the UK, including Argos.
Following a talk on the basics of LPG safety by Calor’s Phil Anderson, conference regular Dr Uwe Weiner, head of Düsseldorf-based IWS Handling, gave details of his firm’s latest technology research. These include a pallet turning device which simply turns half empty pallets 180 degrees and places them back in the racking – so that the full side is presented to the manual picker, reducing the risk of manual handling injuries.
As well as rack end protectors and foldable working platforms, Weiner and his team have also devised a solution to help gauge whole body vibration issues on forklifts: In Germany, he says, over 20 per cent of diseases in industry are muscular-skeletal, with forklift operators suffering spinal disc damage as a result of vibrations. The result of the research is a vibration monitoring kit, which will be available from March next year and will cost less than £500. His team also developed a whole body vibration simulator for Linde (which sponsors some of the IWS’ work) that can be used to test different seat suspensions, in order to reduce vibration. Taking that work further,Weiner and his team have developed an ‘air spring semi active seat suspension system’. Able to adjust itself in milliseconds thanks to a design employing a coil and MR fluid,Weiner claims the system outperforms existing seat suspension systems by around 20 per cent.
After a presentation on the safety and productivity benefits of STILL’s FMX-Auto units – trucks which are fully automated and therefore don’t require any human contact – totally removing the risk of human/truck accidents, came a presentation from industry newcomer, Gravloc. The system, which prevents trucks from tipping, lifting more than their rated load and more, fits any make of truck, can be incorporated into new truck designs or retrofitted, and costs less than £500. Find out more on p12.
Finally, Ian Vernon, of City of London Corporation closed the conference with a case study illustrating just what can be achieved by joined up thinking: New Spitalfields Market receives over a million vehicle visit a year, using 16 different entrances with 220 forklifts in operation. Having been deemed to have a higher than acceptable forklift accident rate, the organisation has now seen a reduction in forklift accidents of 77 per cent. And that, according to Vernon, is just the start.
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