Welcome to the 15 September Warehouse & Logistics News. As the leaves turn for autumn, it’s time to brush up your knowledge of warehouse safe working. Warehouse & Logistics News is again proud to be the official media partner for the Fork Lift Truck Association’s Annual Safety Conference on Wednesday 25th September at Warwick University. With this issue, we are publishing an exclusive bound-in supplement linked to the event looking at fork truck safety and warehouse best practice and safety in general.
We also have scheduled features on Order Picking, taking in pickers, pick to light and voice picking, and Power Sources, covering all aspects of motive power in the warehouse environment, including batteries, LPG and engines.
As our FLTA Safety Conference Supplement makes clear, recent years have seen major advances in the design, performance and usage of forklifts and other workplace equipment. Even so, forklifts remain one of Britain’s biggest causes of workplace fatalities, with the potential to cause over 1,100 injuries annually, according to the HSE.
As reported on our front page, Briggs Equipment, the UK distributor of Hyster and Yale materials handling equipment and sponsor of the FLTA Safety Conference, has launched a new health and safety initiative to help eliminate all foreseeable workplace accidents. Developed since Briggs acquired Barloworld in 2012, the ‘BE Safe’ campaign is the latest installment in Briggs’ activity programme to help reduce forklift truck-related accidents. ‘BE Safe’ aims to encourage a new ‘stop and think’ internal culture whereby employees feel empowered to talk to their managers if they have concerns about performing certain repairs, or feel their working environment is unsafe. You can read an in-depth interview with Gavin Wickham, Briggs’ Operations Director, in the FLTA Safety Conference Supplement.
Also in our Safety Conference Supplement, we speak to Stuart Taylor, Director of Mentor Performance & Risk Management, part of Mentor FLT Training, the UK’s leading provider of training and associated services for all types of materials handling equipment and workplace transport. Established over 25 years, Mentor Training has trained over 500,000 fork lift operators to date, and currently trains over 45,000 per year.
The recently released third edition of the HSE’s Approved Code of Practice (L117), covering Rider-operated lift trucks, puts added emphasis on training operators, and means managers and supervisors face a growing burden of care. In his presentation at the FLTA Safety Conference on managing forklift operations, Stuart Taylor will explain how Mentor’s ‘Managing Forklift Operations’ course fully meets and complies with the new guidance, and equips managers with the specialist knowledge and confidence to promote safety standards and stop bad practice in its tracks.
Here’s to a successful Conference, and being able to report some improved fork truck safety figures next year.
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