I hate forklifts. This doesn’t make me too popular with my colleagues in Production, so I’m careful where I say that out loud. The problem is that they are large, noisy, and require a lot of floor space to operate in. In the case of internal combustion lifts they are stinky, and can produce air quality issues when operated indoors.

The larger problem with forklifts are that they are dangerous. There are seldom ‘minor’ accidents involving heavy lift equipment, and they are all too often fatal. Another story about a fatal forklift accident hit my news feed this week, and I immediately flashed back to an incident that took place just a few miles down the road from our plant not very long ago.

Out of curiosity I did a quick search for forklift involved accidents that resulted in fatalities on OSHA.gov. The search produced 20 records year-to-date, and I’m fairly certain there were more fatalities in the U.S. than are represented there. Reduce the severity of the accident and the search returns too many documents to read through.

In manufacturing we take safety very seriously, and any facility that utilizes forklifts indoors should (and I assume most do) have an in-depth and regularly updated safety training program for both drivers and pedestrians on forklift safety.

I would propose that it is the responsibility of Manufacturing Engineers to put out great effort when designing factory layouts and processes to remove as much of the hazard as we possibly can. With that in mind I have two primary goals that I apply to any process design or modification:

Design out the forklift

It may not always be possible to hit this one 100%, but it’s a good goal to shoot for zero forklift traffic on the interior of any production building. As a general rule, if there is going to be any foot traffic at all in a building or space, I’ll look for a way to move materials using automation, and keep the forklifts confined to the exterior of the buildings or the storage/shipping areas within the buildings. In a lot of cases this is going to result in a larger up-front capital investment but should be an easy sell when related to safety. Bring labor reduction and throughput into the argument and it almost becomes a slam-dunk.

Design forklift travel into “no man’s land”

If indoor forklift traffic in close proximity to production personnel is unavoidable, I recommend separating the two with strong engineering controls, sequestering the forklift traffic to an area that is inaccessible to pedestrian traffic. Painting lines on the floor, audible alarms and projecting lights are a good, inexpensive start, but is essentially administrative controls. These approaches require lots of supervision and strong enforcement, and rely on workers not desensitized to warnings over time. Instead, be thinking about physical barriers like fencing and light curtains.

I can foresee a day when automated guided vehicles (AGV) will make forklifts obsolete, but they are still a tough argument when it comes down to cost of ownership and flexibility. I do believe that they will be at least a partial answer to the ongoing forklift safety issue, and should be implemented as a material handling solution when possible, but I think we’re still a few years away from the technology becoming pervasive. Recent high-profile accidents involving self-driving car programs don’t help any.

What solutions have you found to mitigate the issue of forklift safety? Have you discovered any “out of the box” solutions for keeping forklifts and people from coming in contact with each other? I’d love to hear your ideas or solutions.