Material handling in warehouses comes with many risks, especially when your workers are indulged in it manually. Lifting, carrying, and pushing heavyweights regularly can take a toll on their well-being and make the entire warehouse unsafe to work in.
There can be unwanted injuries, sprains, back problems, and similar issues arising because of it. As an employer, you would have to handle the medical costs, decreased productivity, and low employee morale.
So, it is better to think of the preventive measures beforehand to minimize damage and the costs associated with them. Following are five material handling tips that can work well for you, no matter what is the scale of your organization:
Plan an Efficient Layout
Your warehouse layout is considered efficient when you can maximize the available area and carry the bulk goods around effortlessly and minimize safety hazards. And for that, you need to have the right layout.
You need to create traffic lanes and categorize them as ongoing and outgoing pathways. That will help maintain the flow of shipments and prevent accidents.
Deploy the Right Tools
Manual material handling is risky, time-consuming, and laborious, and using the right tools brings a huge difference. By choosing the appropriate equipment, you can ensure the completion of your process in a safer, faster, and efficient way.
However, the type of tool you make use of is entirely based on the materials you work with. There are conveyor belt systems, storage equipment such as shelves, racks, pallets, and bulk material equipment like trucks, silos, drums, and elevators.
Use Personal Protective Equipment
If you want to be a responsible employer, you have to ensure that the entire workforce working under you is safe while performing heavy weight lifting tasks. And for that, you have to offer protective equipment to them to reduce the chances of physical fatigue and body sprains when dealing with materials manually.
Helmets, goggles, gloves, steel-toed safety boots, and metal fiber guards are some of the essentials you should provide to safeguard them from any impact or compression.
Bring Down the Noise and Vibration Level
Long exposure to noise can be extremely detrimental to your workers’ ears and hearing ability. Widespread vibration in plants causes noise and leads to work-related musculoskeletal disorders and fatigue.
By upgrading your existing equipment or using softer wheel materials, you can minimize vibration and successfully decrease the persistent noise levels in your warehouse.
Regular Maintenance and Care
All handling equipment in your warehouse must be well maintained and serviced. Regular inspection and planned preventive maintenance for conveyors, palletizers, street wrappers, etc., keep them in great condition for years to come and cut down the downtime.
So, pay enough attention to your precious equipment and fix the issues as soon as they arise.
