How to Promote Safety in your Workplace with Material Handling Equipment

Workplace safety is one of the major objectives of material handling equipment. The effective usage of material handling equipment helps in reducing the risk of accidents, injury to workers, and damage to products. For example, using an Airlift Inline Vertical Lifter makes it easy to position and set loads or objects in place quickly and precisely, thus eliminating the ergonomic risks of manual lifting. Let’s take a look at how to promote safety in your workplace with material handling equipment.

According to OSHA, the most common injuries that occur by wrong material handling include:

• Strains and sprains from lifting loads improperly or from carrying loads that are either too large or too heavy,
• Fractures and bruises caused by being struck by materials or by being caught in pinch points, and
• Cuts and bruises caused by falling materials that have been improperly stored, or by incorrectly cutting ties or other securing devices.

This is how material handling equipment can increase safety in the workplace:

Make an ergonomic workplace

With the right use of material handling equipment, you can design and maintain an ergonomic workplace. Such a workplace will reduce the various ergonomic risk factors such as:

1. Forceful exertions like pushing, pulling, or carrying heavy objects
2. Stressful postures like bending and twisting
3. Highly repetitive motions such as frequent carrying, lifting or reaching.

This can be done by employing the relevant material handling equipment to replace manual labor for various tasks of lifting, carrying, pushing, and the pulling of heavy loads.  For instance, a device like an articulating jib eliminates the ergonomic risk factors of bending, twisting and carrying heavy objects. It has great reach-in capabilities for reaching into accessible areas of the workplace.

Considering the task requirements and the capability of your workforce is important in order to reduce fatigue and minimize discomfort for your employees. This is a good way to bring down the risk of injuries.

Avoiding accidents by using the right material handling equipment

Another way to promote workplace safety is by using the right material handling equipment for the job. Different workplaces have different material handling requirements. Understanding these requirements and finding the right kind of equipment is very important. Using the right device for the job promotes safety because the handling tasks are being performed by devices built to perform these tasks. Thus, there is less chance of accidents and damage to the product.

For transporting loads over a fixed path, a conveyor belt system is a great choice as it offers numerous benefits for handling weight loads of various sizes and styles. For accurate positioning and effortless horizontal and vertical movement of material loads, an industrial manipulator is the right choice due to its precise 3-dimensional handling with minimal force required by the operator. For vertical lifting of material loads, the Airlift Inline Vertical Lifter is a great device. These devices are more efficient than manual labor, and hence the chance of injury due to human error is eliminated.