{"id":74204,"date":"2016-07-14T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-07-14T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lantech.com\/blog\/does-your-loading-dock-injury-prevention-plan-create-safety-hazards\/"},"modified":"2021-05-05T15:49:10","modified_gmt":"2021-05-05T19:49:10","slug":"does-your-loading-dock-injury-prevention-plan-create-safety-hazards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lantech.com\/does-your-loading-dock-injury-prevention-plan-create-safety-hazards\/","title":{"rendered":"Does your loading dock injury prevention plan create safety hazards?"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/p>\n So it’s no surprise that companies work hard to prevent unsafe activities and behaviors that lead to preventable workplace and loading dock injury. That’s one of the core principles of a <\/span>lean approach to loading dock operations<\/a>.\n A typical step is to identify high risk activities (on the loading dock bending, lifting, and such tasks are easy to identify) and implement process changes to eliminate the requirement for workers to perform actions that lead to injuries.<\/p>\n A great example is using a pallet wrapper to reduce the unpleasant and injury prone task of manually wrapping pallets. Hand wrapping is often thought of as inexpensive and expedient. That’s a misconception. Aside from not requiring a machine, it typically increases operating cost in several ways:<\/p>\n Hand wrapping a pallet means that a worker will have to lift rolls of film, apply steady pressure as they walk backwards around the load, and slowly bend over as they walk to reach the lower portions of the load. Rolls can be heavy and, like any other heavy object that is manually lifted, carries not only crush risks (from dropped loads) but also repetitive motion injury risks.<\/p>\n The risk of injury doesn\u2019t end there, however. Workers also face the risk of a repetitive motion injury from the act of wrapping itself, both in how they hold the film and the continuous bending and stretching to reach all levels of the load.<\/p>\n Walking backward in a circle for any length of time can also be potentially dangerous. Not only can workers become dizzy from the circular motion, but they also (obviously) can\u2019t see where they are going. A working with no line of sight who is also dizzy is at serious risk for injury in the busy, sometime chaotic, landscape of a loading dock.<\/p>\n With all of the downsides and risks of hand wrapping, it’s obviously an easy <\/span>place for a plant manager or process engineer to look for opportunities to reduce risks and increase efficiency<\/a> <\/span>on the loading dock.<\/p>\n But simply replacing hand wrapping with a machine based process isn’t a panacea. Not only are the other issues (throughput, materials consumption, load containment<\/a>) subject to the details of the technical solution, but the machine itself needs to be inherently safe or the ultimate goal of reducing risk of workplace accidents may be missed.<\/p>\n As we mentioned before, a typical loading dock is the scene of lots of activity, sometimes a bit chaotic, with honking horns, opening and closing doors, forklifts zipping to and fro and loads swinging around corners without warning and amidst all that activity it’s easy to overlook some potential injury risks in a simple machine like a pallet wrapper – but that’s a mistake. <\/p>\n Other safety features of many semi-automatic stretch wrappers include:<\/p>\nPlanning for Safety<\/h2>\nWorkplace injuries are incredibly expensive – in a number of ways. Lost days, workers’ comp premium increases, reputation, impact on worker commitment to the company, overtime, and even the basic ethical cost of not doing everything reasonable to protect workers.<\/p>\n
Designing risk free processes<\/h2>\n
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\nTrade up, not laterally<\/h2>\n
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