Material handling presents a number of risk factors. When lifting heavy objects manually or with equipment, there are many situations that could potentially go wrong. Potential hazards can lead to serious injury. From the expensive medical bills to increased downtime, workplace injuries should be avoided at all costs. 

How Can You Improve Material Handling Safety?

To ensure that your warehouse is safe and productive, you must follow safety procedures to keep staff out of harm’s way. Stacking and storing materials comes with its own set of potential hazards, but when you’re manually moving materials, the safety threats are even higher. Here are a few ways that you can improve material handling safety in your warehouse:

1. Ensure Personal Protective Equipment Being Worn
2. Safety Training
3. Upgrade Material Handling Equipment

1) Ensure Personal Protective Equipment Being Worn

It’s no longer enough to just provide the appropriate protective equipment anymore. You have to regularly check that staff is following safety procedures and staying protected by wearing the appropriate eye gear, hard hats, shoes, and clothing.

Pro Tip: To minimize workplace injuries, hang up signs in each area with guidelines on the proper safety gear that should be worn.

2) Safety Training

Occupational safety training should be part of your regular training. The training should include improper lifting techniques, how to handle the various weight of the objects, and how to reduce load weights when possible. The handling and storage of materials can lead to unsafe situations that managers and employees need to be frequently trained on. When employees are trained well, accidents are less likely to happen.

3) Upgrade Material Handling Equipment

Another way to reduce workplace injuries is to regularly test your material handling equipment. If the equipment fails, this could cause serious harm to your staff. Check every aspect of the equipment including, the engines, the batteries, and the transmission. If you find that your transmission has failed or is not running it’s best, consider sending the transmission in for repairs. However, if the repairs cost more than the transmission, it may be time to upgrade. A cost-effective solution is opting for a rebuilt Allison transmission. Since Allison transmissions are automatic, they can significantly improve material handling operations.

A Safe Workplace

It’s important for the wellbeing of your employees to have safety guidelines in place. Furthermore, adequate training and updated equipment are mandatory to keep operations running smoothly.

Do you have any questions about safely operating material handling equipment? Join the conversation to speak with our industrial equipment experts today!