Page 22 - OHS, September 2022

TRAINING: MATERIALS HANDLING
requirement falls in line with the aisleway and housekeeping
causing injury to nearby employees.
The material storage piece of material handling is broad, but
training everyone who handles materials can prevent accidents from the office to the offsite storage building to the warehouse. Be sure the training includes:
■ Sharing examples of unsafe storage (“What’s wrong with this picture?” is a great discussion tool).
■ Discussion on what makes storage safe and what can make it unstable (such as uneven pallets, dissimilar items stored together, insufficient or damaged racks and inconsistent stacking practices).
■ Opportunities for material handlers to share their concerns and ideas for improvement.
■ How material storage can impact housekeeping or designated aisleways.
Consider this: Warehouse pickers pull products off of double- stacked pallets of mixed parts on the fifth level of rack rows. The pallets are mixed with lots of varying sizes and numbers of products. Is there a risk of the pallets becoming unstable?
Designated paths and aisleways, housekeeping and secure storage are all quite intertwined. If one topic suffers, the others will likely follow suit, indicating more significant problems are brewing. By addressing the requirements of these topics and clearly outlining company expectations in a written program, training everyone who handles materials is a breeze.
Training Tips
■ Have a written program that helps keep a consistent message.
■ Use interactive training which can have a more significant impact.
■ Discuss real-world examples to bring the point closer to home.
■ Ask for input from employees on what they think.
■ Practice identifying risky situations.
■ Train supervisors on equal and uniform enforcement.
■ Remind workers that that just because it has always been
done a certain way does not mean it is right.
The scope of material handling is broad and covers employees
from different industries and jobs, each with unique situations and hazards. By providing comprehensive training for material handlers, they can focus on getting products and materials from point A to B without incident.
Holly Pups, CSP, joined J. J. Keller in 2021, specializing in workplace safety as an EHS Editor. As a former OSHA compliance officer, she has over a decade of industrial safety experience, in warehousing, pharmaceuticals, and plastics manufacturing. Holly uses her extensive experience to help others understand OSHA regulations and applicable industry best practices. In former roles, she has significantly reduced the severity of material handling accidents and cut the overall number of accidents by more than half.
By clearly outlining company expectations in a written program, training everyone who handles materials is a breeze.
ff racks and block aisles or create a mess that needs to be addressed immediately. ThThis regulation can also be used to cite storing materials in excess of a rack’s load capacity. Also, using broken pallets to stack materials can result in the pallets collapsing and
requirements. If materials are stored haphazardly, they can fall offff
Making travel less stressful.
Ensuring there are no surprises in your lane. Having more clearance and smoother operations.
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Consider this: What could happen if the maintenance
technician put a piece of equipment in the middle of the pedestrian path, near a turn with already limited visibility? Employees may have to leave the designated path to travel around it. PIT operators may not have sufficient clearance to get around the pallet without damaging a nearby wall or rack. What if an employee pops out behind the pallet while the PIT operator is focused on not scraping the wall? In this case everyone involved must be aware of the importance of keeping paths open and clear.
Housekeeping
Good housekeeping is the next training topic for material handlers. Working in cluttered environments where a disaster is waiting to happen makes it hard to safely navigate the workplace. Forklifts can slide in oil or water puddles and slam into racks causing significant property damage, or an employee tripping on a broken pallet can be injured resulting in a lost-time incident.
Often proper housekeeping starts with supervisors. Does your company communicate expectations for housekeeping, or does the expectation vary from supervisor to supervisor? Are certain areas of your facility squeaky clean and others resemble a garbage dump? If that’s the case, developing a written housekeeping program with clear expectations is an excellent place to start.
Train material handlers on what good housekeeping looks like in your facility and ensure that it’s universally enforced. It’s recommended that the training cover:
■ Keeping PIT and pedestrian paths clear.
■ Providing sufficient access to materials.
■ Showing examples of poor housekeeping.
■ Hazardous housekeeping conditions.
■ How to conduct inspections.
■ How employees can offer suggestions for improvement.
Storage
Storing materials safely isn’t limited to warehouse material handlers, it is a concern for all material handlers. Shop and maintenance workers are less likely to have a designated storage location for new equipment when it comes in and may just have to put it somewhere temporarily. Housekeeping and the tool shop should have designated areas to store their materials and equipment.
Under the material handling standard, OSHA also requires that materials be stored securely and don’t create hazards. This
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