Speak to any loading bay equipment supplier and they will tell you that safety is the number one concern of operators yet these suppliers still see examples of poor practice where operators have no robust loading and unloading area safety strategy.
This, and the time constraints of meeting ever-more demanding delivery schedules and a reluctance of staff to be seen as “whistle blowers” over poor practices stymies any significant improvements in the accident rates for what remains the most risky part of any warehouse. The equipment suppliers have done their bit with numerous innovations over the years to improve safety and efficiency but warehouse management must try harder to implement changes if meaningful safety improvements are to be won.
To improve matters, management should ensure that equipment is compliant with all legislative requirements, e.g. Machinery Directive and EN 1398 for dock levellers and EN 1570 for lifting platforms. Staff training to ensure familiarisation with equipment operation should be regularly reviewed and kept up to date, especially as the warehouse industry has a high staff turnover. A third major consideration is to ensure that equipment is part of a regular, preventative maintenance regime, which will also reduce the risk of costly repairs and unscheduled downtime. On this, however, there is still much maintenance neglect.
After safety, the next great operator concern is efficiency. How this is best achieved will depend on the nature of the operation and changing business patterns that will impact loading bay design. If, for example, and operator is tempted to go in for serving double deck lorry trailers then externally added, relocateable loadhouse pods equipped with lifts like those from Transdek should improve loading bay efficiency and distribution costs along with better safety. These pods come with an Active Management System (AMS) which provides an analysis of the performance of each loading bay.
There is a clear trend towards double-deckers which should concentrate minds to prepare for the revolution blowing through distribution where the need is to build in flexibility to cope with these rapidly changing distribution needs brought on by e-tailing, now accounting for about 15% of all UK retail sales. New builds, therefore, should consider segmented, telescopic dock leveller lips to cope with the wider variety of lorries and vans now increasingly needed for those home deliveries.
Efficiency must also embrace the equipment supplier’s infrastructure to support the product after-sales promptly, so that means buyers should assure themselves over the supplier partner’s ability to have enough spares and good response times.
This is where a site visit to the supplier’s base can be assuring, plus visits to the supplier’s other customers to see how reliably the equipment has performed. All the leading loading bay kit suppliers will be only too glad to help in this respect.
The third on the list of operator concerns is cost-effectiveness. To achieve this, operators must give their suppliers full details of load weights moving over dock levellers and any plans to change those parameters, especially if they include plans to use smaller handling trucks with much higher wheel point loads. For the buyer, it is important not to look at the up front cost only but also consider the lifetime cost, just as one should when dealing with new lift truck purchases. It is best to involve the equipment supplier for a whole package at the earliest stage possible, as they may be able to advise on important, energy-saving issues through the most appropriate selection of doors and will provide free energy audits, some of which can be downloaded from their web sites
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