Welcome to the 15 June issue of Warehouse & Logistics News. As 2015 nears halftime, the National Institute for Economic and Social Research has revealed British economic growth speeding up in the three months to May after a weak first quarter, with stronger than expected industrial output in April. NIESR now forecasts 2.5% economic growth for 2015 as a whole. It’s a welcome confidence booster for everyone in warehousing and logistics.
In this issue we have three special features to help you make decisions on equipment, services and solutions to improve your game. ‘Cold Storage & Distribution’ covers different aspects of the vital process of helping manufacturers and retailers keep their products at the right temperature in the supply chain. ‘Power Sources’ covers all aspects of motive power in the warehouse and logistics environment, including batteries, LPG and engines, and ‘Doors & Curtains’ takes in Industrial doors, curtains and roller-shutters.
Achieving maximum output and productivity is important, but it must not be allowed to affect warehouse safety. Regular readers of Warehouse & Logistics News will have been following SEMA’s Three Steps to Safety articles, which have appeared on the front cover in recent issues of WLN. On our front cover in this issue, Steve Hall concludes the storage equipment lead body’s campaign by offering best practice guidance to end users on the maintenance and repair of storage systems, including the use of rack protection measures. In SEMA’s words, it’s as easy as 1-2-3!
The message from SEMA’s initiative is that racking collapse and subsequent potential prosecution are simple to avoid with a safety culture, and that correct protocols for inspection, maintenance and repair do exist. To quote SEMA’s article, it’s an employer’s duty to manage risk to life and property, so they must always demonstrate a safe system of work. As the law stands, investment in terms of money, time and trouble must ‘grossly outweigh’ the risk, not balance it.
The first form of protection is for the racking to be specified, designed and installed with adequate clearances and carrying capacity. Second, it must only be used by trained operators; and third, effective inspection and maintenance procedures must be in place. Staff need to be ‘safety aware’ with damage reported immediately, inspections undertaken weekly or monthly by a suitably qualified individual and a competent qualified rack inspector, ideally SEMA approved, should be employed to undertake a six monthly or annual audit.
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