The Tools and Tips You Need to Help Keep Your Production Floor Safe

Posted by Magliner on February 6th, 2020

The production floor of any company can present risks and hazards. The risk of injury is a concern for any business, but workers on production floors are at greater risk. Keeping workers safe is a vital responsibility of every employer, even beyond the financial and legal implications of an injury at the workplace. Safe, well-trained, happy employees make for a better workplace. The good news is that safety can be accomplished with some diligence, and sometimes with equipment upgrades as simple as transitioning from a traditional hand truck to a powered hand truck.

Strict Personal Protective Equipment Procedure

Personal protective equipment (PPE) is an immediate line of defense for an employee’s personal safety, and its importance can’t be overstated. All staff should wear the appropriate PPE whenever entering any production floor, as should visitors, managers, and anyone else who steps onto the floor. Part of a safe workplace PPE program is having PPE on-site in case any members of staff forget theirs, pieces of their PPE fail, there are visitors, or other circumstances arise. That means having extra high-quality gloves, hairnets, hardhats, eye and ear protection, and anything else required in a variety of sizes available and accessible at all times. PPE can be easy to forget, use incorrectly, or simply dismiss, for any number of innocuous reasons. Breaches in PPE policy should be taken very seriously, however, to remind employees that they share the responsibility for their own safety.

The Right Tools for the Job

Appropriate tools can reduce the physical strain employees are under each day, which is an important aspect of short- and long-term health. A good example is material handling. Bending and lifting strain is a huge source of injury in the workplace. Back pain and injuries alone cost US employers 5.8 billion each year. On top of immediate financial implications, workers with pain will likely be less happy and less productive. Tools that reduce bending, and especially lifting things from the floor, are necessary investments on any production floor. For the heaviest lifting, switching from a traditional hand truck to a hand lift truck can make a huge difference.

Enforce Equipment Training and Certification Policies

Not every employee can hop on a piece of equipment like a forklift if the floor is short-staffed or running behind schedule. Any equipment that requires training or licensing to operate should be carefully tracked and monitored to ensure that only properly authorized employees are able to access it. For the sake of safety and liability, these policies should be strictly enforced and supported with physical or digital tracking to keep everyone accountable. If work needs to get done but there is a shortage of qualified employees, consider providing alternative tools, such as a lift hand truck from a reputable company. An effective lift hand truck will have powered lifting action but no powered locomotion, meaning that it doesn’t require a license to operate, but can perform many of the same tasks as a forklift.

About Magline

Magliner hand trucks have been lynchpin tools of material handling operations for over 70 years. They are such a staple in the material handling space that the word “Magliner” is now regularly used in reference to any hand cart, regardless of the brand. There is, however, no substitute for a real Magliner. The Magline standard of dependability, ease of use, reliability, and quality is simply unmatched. Along with their traditional hand truck, Magliner equipment includes a variety of more specialized material handling solutions. Those include their stair climbing cart line, motorized hand truck collection, and a whole lot more. For delivery drivers, warehouse pickers, trucking and logistics professionals, and every other occupation or undertaking that requires moving stock, there’s a perfect Magliner for the job.

Find out exactly how Magliner equipment can help your employees at Magliner.com

Original Source: http://bit.ly/3aZ5xk5