How To Improve the Safety of Your Pallet Racks
If you’re operating a warehouse, then chances are you’re spending a lot of time working with pallet racks. After all, pallet racks are an essential component for storing and moving significant amounts of inventory. However, pallet racks hold and handle heavy items, so they can certainly pose a risk to your workers on the job.
How can we balance efficiency and safety in the warehouse? In this blog, we’ll analyze practical ways to help elevate your warehouse’s safety, while maintaining a high level of operation. From routine inspections to protectors, let’s take a closer look at pallet rack safety.
Assess Your Current Racks
Before you can really enact a pallet racking safety strategy in your warehouse, it can be helpful to inspect your current racking system and determine what works well and where there’s room to improve. You can either do this in-house or hire an expert consultant to assess and identify solutions. An audit or inspection can also ensure that racking systems are compliant with local safety standards. In addition, an analysis will help determine what pallet racking system would work best in your warehouse based on its size, layout, safety setups, and other goals.
Roll-Out Shelves
One of the major problem areas for pallet racks is when they’re picked by a forklift. Picks can go wrong, lead to worker strain, or cause other issues if there’s a need to manually adjust the rack onto the forklift. One solution is to invest in roll-out shelves, which pallets are placed on to easily roll out and create separation from one another. These make them easier to pick and also help reduce the risk of any injury.
Rack Post Protectors
No matter how careful we are in the warehouse, pallet racks are struck from time to time by forklifts. These incidents can jar beams, shake racks, and potentially even damage some products (and hurt anyone around them). That’s where rack post protectors come in handy. From snap-on to bolt-down models, frame post protectors are installed near the bottom of the structure where forklifts are likely to come into contact. They absorb impact and resist damage to keep the structure intact. Warehouse racking protection measures like this are an easy – yet significant – safety component.
Rack Back-Stops
Another common warehouse mishap is a forklift driver pushing a pallet rack too deep into the rack structure. When this happens, it could damage the pallets and potentially dump products into aisles near other workers. One of the best ways to improve pallet racking safety and avoid incidents like these is to install rack back-stops, which prevent operators from putting the rack too deep by creating resistance. It’s a simple solution, but it has a significant impact on warehouse racking safety.
Improve Your Pallet Rack Safety Today
For more information and tips on pallet rack safety, contact the materials experts at A-Lined Handling Systems today.