A potential choke point in any warehouse is the loading bay. It is also the most hazardous, often energy inefficient and perhaps maintenance costly. On the safety front the industry has certainly become safer “but there is still potential for improvement,” comments Alan Jenkins, commercial director at Hormann. The company has also seen a big rise over the last decade in door protective equipment, like bollards to protect doors and protective barriers around racking system columns.
In trying to achieve the triple S factor – speed, safety and security – maintenance is the key, supported by new innovative kit to cope with the changing nature of loading bay operations brought on by the revolution of e-commerce and multi-channel shopping. On this front there is more good news, for an industry where maintenance was once the loading bay Cinderella, often only reactive after door breakdowns. Hormann, for example, has seen a significant growth in its preventative maintenance support services over the last year, and not only for its own manufactured products.
This surge, believes the company, could be ascribed to an increased awareness of the role regular maintenance can play in safer operations. More importantly, perhaps, preventative maintenance is cost effective at cutting door downtime and costly emergency call-outs. One manufacturer was routinely spending £50,000 a year for damaged doors.
Even so, Alan Jenkins says that there are still too many business owners who are not aware of the true importance of regular maintenance when it comes to health and safety planning. “Many companies think that because they have a certificate stating that their door complies with current health and safety legislation and CE certification that they are covered as far as the Health and Safety Executive is concerned. But this is clearly not the case,” says Mr Jenkins. Worryingly, he goes on to say: “We read about more and more prosecutions against company owners, where harm to persons has occurred and can be attributed to lack of maintenance on operational equipment.”
Over the last 30 years or so the loading bay industry has been commendably pro-active at developing new equipment to make life easier for warehouse operators. Leading industry suppliers, for example, offer door crash-out facilities so that they can be easily reinstated without too much downtime. Automatic door control systems hasten throughput rates, and vehicle dock-loading devices prevent premature lorry departure or creep. Where vehicle loading speed is critical, companies like Joloda have developed one-shot loading able to fill a 40t trailer within four minutes.
The changing nature of distribution has also midwifed innovative products like Assa Abloy’s ‘Crawford Combidock’, designed with a retractable tongue dock-leveller lip, which can service both trailers and vans of smaller width, changing at the flick of a switch. As operators move away from standardised bed heights, suppliers and users are looking for a solution for all from a single bay. By focussing on removing the need for lorries/vans to queue for the ‘right dock’ you increase the number of loading bays available at any one time, thus shortening turn around times.
There is also good news on the energy front, now so important both for costs and CO2 control. Given that very few loading bay operations are identical, an energy audit could prove an eye opener, and so should be the start of any exercise to improve matters. In this respect loading bay suppliers offer free energy audits, after which the exercise can begin to fit the most appropriate doors.
Loading bays may be costly to run and their operators too busy to cogitate on improving their efficiency but if they knew how much their ignorance was costing they would find time to set aside for regular thoughts.
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