Logistic Summit & Expo 2018, the Latin America’s main trade fair in Intralogistics and Supply Chain, was held a few days ago in Mexico.

The Claitec team, together with Drill Company, Claitec’s importer in Mexico, exhibited its PAS (Pedestrian Alert System) product ranges and latest developments.

Drill Company’s presence at the fair represented an excellent opportunity to promote the CLAITEC brand and products on the Latin American market.

Claitec is delighted with the reception our stand had amongst visitors.

We have addressed the need to be vigilant about pedestrians within our industrial spaces more than once. We have also spoken about some of the precautions forklifts must take in order to avoid accidents and minimise any potential risks. In this post we’d like to introduce you to an innovative system that not only manages traffic in work spaces, but it does so autonomously.

Enter the Traffic Control System (TCS), which is used to separate pedestrians from forklifts in a joint work space. The TCS is a comprehensive traffic control system, which does not depend on batteries or mobile devices. It works totally passively which means that it does not require human attention, constant maintenance or monitoring.

An AC-50 activator, a TZ2-Tag, a control box, a beacon, a traffic light and gate are required to operate the TCS Solution. These are all durable components capable of resisting the harsh industrial routine. The devices that are installed in the warehouse allow the detection of the forklifts already equipped with the activator. If necessary, the information is then sent to the traffic lights, the signalling beacons, the safety gates and railings, in order to segregate pedestrians.

To give you an idea of the TCS’s function – when a truck enters the safety zone delimited by the TZ2-Tag, the vehicle’s and warehouse lighting’s warnings are activated to alert them of their presence. At the same time, the pedestrian traffic light turns red and the safety gate is blocked preventing workers in that work space to continue walking. When the truck leaves the safety space, the traffic light automatically turns green and the previously activated mechanisms are unlocked.

This innovative system can be perfectly applied in areas with low visibility, in spaces where there is a risk of blind spots, at pedestrian and forklift crossings, in spaces with a high forklift traffic, loading and unloading areas, in warehouses, production lines and many other options that you will surely find when installing it in your facilities.

If you want to know more about this innovative product you can see an illustrative video here. If you want more information about this system or any of the other products we offer, do not hesitate to contact us.

In previous posts we talked about forklift safety and the best possible ways to add prevention elements to these key tools in our industries. Today, we’d like to share some of the control systems and forklift fleet management methods used by the leading brands in our industry to help us understand some of their key safety functions that could allow us to reduce workplace accidents.

First, it’s important to understand that the professional monitoring of the use of forklifts and the constant and strategic monitoring of their journey will not only provide greater safety for all our team members but it will allow us to operate in a much more efficient and holistic way.

One of the methods used involves RFID readers and/or codes – a configuration is established that allows the trucks to be used only by authorised and specially trained personnel. This way managers know at all times who is driving each of these heavy vehicles.

At the same time, documenting impacts is a very useful process that helps us analyse the operation and circulation of forklifts and to identify the main areas and causes of accidents. With that goal in mind, impact sensors are being incorporated to loading vehicles in such a way that, in case of collision, this is registered in a database that includes the name of the person driving at the moment of the impact.

In addition, this type of measures will lead to the operators being more careful when practicing certain types of manoeuvres. These systems will provide useful information on the operating patterns of the forklift and will help track and plan its maintenance stages.

We should also point out that Claitec’s PAS Solution can also bring great value to this type of fleet control development. One of the most interesting advantages of this product is its ability to record when and which trucks detected a pedestrian. This way, we can locate the critical points of circulation in our industry and the areas of greatest risk to pedestrians, in order to take measures and avoid accidents in the future.

These are some of the impact control and fleet management systems implemented by the biggest brands in the world:

• Toyota i-site: a fleet management and registration system that allows the company to monitor the use of the forklift and the operator’s performance in real time. It provides a continuous analysis and advice to clients.
• The Linde Fleet Management  system for the control of forklift fleets, developed by Linde Material Handling Ibérica, and focused towards offering customers the possibility to have key data on their fleet in real time.
• The ISM Online system from Jungheinrich, responsible for forklift management information and which corresponds to a comprehensive fleet management with which an entire fleet of trucks can be managed, regardless of size and complexity.
• And Still’s Fleet Manager which generates a complete plan of the management and monitoring of the industrial fleet, considering the optimisation of resources and the professional and efficient operation of our work vehicles.

If you’d like to find out more information about the solutions we can provide, don’t hesitate to contact us: https://claitec.com/en/contact/

Keeping your company safe means protecting the people that make it what it is. When it comes to responding to an emergency, those people and your company are put at risk. The best way to keep everyone safe is to take the time and create an emergency evacuation plan. But in order to have an effective evacuation plan, your company needs to keep some important things in mind.

Setting Expectations

The key to creating and maintaining an effective emergency plan begins with knowing exactly what you want. It is important to know the necessary timeframe for a successful evacuation, and where employees are expected to go during the emergency. The ‘where’ and ‘evacuation time’ are the most important expectations to get in order. These must be based on the risks of your company in particular. You cannot properly institute risk prevention policies without being aware of the potential risks you face.

In the event of a serious emergency, there may be areas of the building that are more likely to be compromised than others: rooms containing highly flammable substances, areas with obstructions, etc. This means that these parts of the building should be avoided during an evacuation. In the case of the storage of combustible or other potentially harmful materials, an evacuation point should be a safe distance away from these areas.

How long you have to evacuate will mainly be dependent on the types of risks your company faces. Always plan for the timeframe of the emergency that has the shortest time allotted for evacuation. That way you can evacuate fast enough to protect your employees no matter what happens.

Alternative Evacuation

We all know the saying about best-laid plans, and how they often go awry. An emergency evacuation plan should take this into account most of all. As much as you can try to expect the unexpected, there are always complications. People can panic and create unanticipated problems for even the best plans. Similarly, safety measures you planned to rely on could fail in the moment. That is why a truly effective evacuation strategy is somewhat fluid. A comprehensive workplace safety model will take all these factors into account, in order to craft a seamless emergency evacuation strategy.

There should never be one available exit path or one relied upon rendezvous point. These are just not reliable enough to stake the well-being of all your employees on. The confusion that can ensue during an emergency is often due to excessively rigid evacuation plans. That rigidity can make all the preparation worthless. That is why training and planning must be dynamic. In these extreme and unpredictable situations being able to account for employees is a must. At the end of the day, it is about making sure everyone is safe.

Practice

An emergency plan is not complete without a plan of how to teach it and train people to use it. And far too often practice breeds complacency. Employees and even employers begin to simply go through the motions of drills and training. I believe that all forms of practice must be somewhat confrontational in order to be effective. This is not to say that these drills and planning sessions should be disrespectful, but they should challenge employees. The expectations that you have set should be maintained, and there should be experimentation with alternative evacuations.

One of the best methods of practice is to simply ask employees about the evacuation plan. When they propose a way of exiting the building, have a probable means of denying it. They say, “I would use the emergency exit at the end of the hall.” You respond, “The roof over that exit has caved in. What do you do?” This shakes people out of complacency. They are no longer being led or relying solely on what they already know.

This kind of confrontational preparation gets the mind working in the ways needed to solve problems during the high stress of an emergency. Also, businesses can incentivize their employees to encourage more participation in the safety program. Furthermore, rigorous practice helps highlight workplace risks that come in handy during a workplace risk assessment.

The Safety Mindset

There is a cost to safety. It takes both an investment of time and money to create the most effective plans. You will need to set aside time to train employees on safety procedures and the proper way evacuate. And training, drills, and other forms of practice must be ongoing to assure the effectiveness of the overall safety strategy. The company will also need to have effective safety and security technology.

As mentioned above, tracking your employees is invaluable for evacuation planning. Not only will you be able to know that everyone made it out, in the worst case scenario you will be able to point emergency responders in the right direction. It is also important to have the physical safety and security devices in the building working effectively.

Doors and locks are especially important, as malfunctions of this type can lead to lockouts, trapping employees during an emergency. Sticking doors, locks that are not turning smoothly, etc., should be seen as red flags.

Most of the time security professionals can salvage this type of security hardware with maintenance, but you must always be willing to invest in installing new commercial locks. There are a good selection of warehouse locks that can be used to bolster your warehouse security and keep your emergency evacuation plan well rounded. Whenever something is not working, you cannot shy away from the cost of safety.

Final Thoughts

To have an effective emergency plan, you need to know what you are looking to accomplish. Where people are evacuating to, and how fast they need to get there. There must be room for things to change without causing a catastrophic breakdown in the plan. This comes from dynamic and confrontational practice methods. And at the end of the day, the willingness to invest the resources into this preparedness will determine how safe your employees and company are.