Rethinking Your Approach to Forklift Safety

Sponsored by:

Crown Equipment

With the day-to-day goal of keeping materials flowing and customers satisfied, it can be challenging to maintain the required focus on training. Adopting an integrated and individualized approach to forklift safety can be key to achieving this goal. This approach, outlined in our e-book, “An Integrated Approach to Forklift Safety,” helps ensure safety is top of mind and helps drive measurable improvements in key safety metrics.  

Below are the five components of an integrated and individualized safety approach that are vital to creating and maintaining a strong safety culture. 

1. Training that is accessible, personalized, and extends across the workforce — Training is a fundamental element of the safety equation, encouraging employees to embrace their roles in keeping everyone safe. Whether classroom-based or streamed online, training for operators, supervisors, and pedestrians should be interactive, engaging, and tailored to the individual. 
2. Compliance management that controls access and automates processes for streamlining safety adherence — Through data collection and analysis, managers can control access to equipment, automate processes that streamline compliance, and receive a more complete view of adherence to safety regulations. 
3. Equipment design that prioritizes safer operation — Product design can play a vital role in your safety program. For instance, several operator-assist technologies available today can work passively or actively to reinforce training and guide operators to employ best practices consistently. Solutions incorporating Crown’s Proximity Assist and Geo Assist technologies utilize advanced sensors and software, including technologies such as Lidar, ultra-wideband, and telematics, to alert the operator and adjust forklift performance parameters based on the task, location, and environment to promote safe, productive operations. 
4. Connectivity that provides more visibility, awareness and opportunities —Connected devices and equipment that enable the collection and analysis of data across the workplace offer a new tool for identifying opportunities for supervision, reinforcement of training, and effecting behavioral changes. When accountability, positive feedback, and regular reporting become the norm, it helps firmly establish that safety is each person’s responsibility.
5. Data analytics that inform safety goals — Real-time and historical data from forklift fleet and operator management systems enable fleets to take specific, data-informed steps to achieve safety improvements, including identifying and responding to safety-related incidents, as well as identifying correct and incorrect behaviors. 

Everyone has an important part to play in creating and promoting a strong safety culture in the workplace. A fragmented approach to safety could potentially weaken your safety culture.

At Crown, our deep experience has taught us that an integrated and individualized approach to safety can help bring a consistent focus to safety management and close the gaps in existing programs. It also stresses the important role everyone plays in creating and maintaining a safe work environment, helping to drive measurable improvements in key safety metrics.

For more information on how to take an integrated and individualized approach to safety, visit the Safety page at crown.com and download “An Integrated Approach to Forklift Safety.”

Contributed by Crown Equipment Corporation