MHI Solutions Improving Supply Chain Performance
Safer Handling
The protective guarding industry has been busier than ever in recent years as those who operate warehouses and distribution centers demonstrate an increasingly sophisticated and determined commitment to safety.
“I think we’ve seen a general increase in concern for safety,” said Kenneth Parrott, product manager for MHI member Impact Recovery and chair of the Protective Guarding Manufacturers Association (ProGMA). “I think that companies have come to the realization that not only do they want to protect their employees for the right reasons, but also how costly it is when there is an accident. So, just in general, there’s been a push to improve their safety and their guarding.”
Electric charger protection
ProGMA, a trade group within MHI, is composed of manufacturers of protective guarding products designed to protect personnel, equipment and inventory in industrial facilities. Kyle Nobile, engineering director for MHI member Integrated Warehouse Solutions and vice chair of ProGMA, said protective guarding equipment is not meant to be the primary safety tool in a warehouse but rather a vital tool when something goes awry. As a comparison, Nobile noted, “Highways have guardrails running down the side of them, but you don’t drive your car scraping against that guardrail. If you need that guardrail, though, you’re sure happy it’s there.”
“In a perfect world, our product wouldn’t be needed and would never, ever be hit,” Nobile said. “Protective guarding isn’t really meant to be the primary means of preventing any kind of accident, but just the final failsafe if the rest of the system fails.”
An elevated conveyor guardrail
The ever-growing demands on the supply chain have led to new protective guarding challenges in warehouses. For instance, Parrott said topple protection is attracting a growing amount of focus in the protective guarding field. Topple protection is designed to prevent stacks of pallets or boxes from tipping over, which often includes preventing a stack’s support structure at ground level from being struck and disturbed.
Topple protection has grown in importance as warehouses stack items higher and higher to creatively fill up their footprint. “Warehouses seem to currently be building up instead of out,” Nobile said.
A barrier in topple protection should not only be able to stop a product from falling initially in the event of a toppling but it also should be able to hold it aloft for an extended duration so that someone can fix the problem before the product falls.
In addition to increased vertical storage, Parrott and Nobile said they are seeing more pallet racking pushed closer and closer together. That increases the risk of team members making unintended contact with storage areas.
“If you can’t build up and you can’t increase your footprint, you just start sliding everything tighter together,” Nobile said. “They’re getting their pallet racking closer. You’ve still got to have order pickers or forklifts or whatever running up and down the aisle, and you don’t have space for them to avoid the structural supports anymore. So now you need physical barriers to make sure that if they’re in a tight aisle, they’re not going to knock the entire pallet rack over whenever they’re trying to get product from it.”
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