Safety improvements to support increased workload for H-E Parts team members
H-E Parts #safetychampions have increased productivity while reducing manual handling after being awarded numerous ongoing supply contracts for their Protech™ ceramic liners, by introducing a vacuum lift to eliminate manual handling of ceramic tiles for warehouse personnel.
Prevention of Musculoskeletal Injury
Crushing Solutions continue to be awarded further contracts to refurbish and supply, on a rotable basis, ceramic lined ore chutes.
It was recognized that this would lead to a significant increase in the turnover of ceramic tiles through the warehouse, from receipt, sorting to stock and picking for work orders.
Prior to the award of these additional contracts, all ceramic tiles were unpacked from crates manually, labelled and loaded onto pallets for storage and manually picked. The heaviest of the ceramic tiles weighed in at 74.3kg (163.8lb).
The work was demanding and required warehouse staff to manage the manual handling issues as best they could, working at comfortable heights, rotating personnel through the task, ensuring adequate time was allowed for the task and using two people for heavy lifts.
The expected increase in turnover led to concern that the amount of manual handling would inevitably lead to musculoskeletal injury to one or more warehouse personnel.
At H-E Parts, we work to ensure our teams have the equipment required to complete the task safely.
After an extensive search and trials with different products, a vacuum lift was selected as the best solution to eliminate manual handling of ceramic tiles for warehouse personnel.
Outcome of Improvement
We are expecting to see not only improvements in safety but productivity. The time taken, and personnel involved in unpacking, putting into stock and picking are expected to reduce significantly. The vacuum lift was commissioned on the 25th February, 2019 and is now in active use.