Racking safety

In lieu of the recent rack collapse in the UK (https://goo.gl/aB99fO), a lesson to us all must be learnt about preventative safety measures in the warehouse.

In my humble opinion, the British are the most safety conscious people I have ever encountered. For this incident to take place in their country is a big deal and it illustrates that you can never be too prepared. The amount of customers I have seen throughout my years in the industry who have no rack protection at all is downright scary.

Even though I live in a seismic area where racking should ideally be designed to seismic standards, I always maintain that a rack collapse is much more likely to occur by a forklift impact than from an earthquake. Think about it; material handling equipment can get to some serious speed and with a loaded pallet you are talking > 2.5 tons of static load; imagine all that mass being applied as force to a rack frame which is loaded with tons of goods. 

So in short, here are the preventative measures you should take:

• install rack protection everywhere (see my previous article on warehouse safety for a guide)
• clearly mark forklift traffic aisles in yellow to be visible to pedestrians, or segregate pedestrians by means of barriers
• carry out a rack inspection at least once per year and following that fix any damaged parts immediately
• If any impact occurs that damages the rack, unload the affected area immediately and report it to your safety officer
• apply load signs on each rack row indicating the max allowed capacity
• do not move beam levels without consulting your rack supplier; this could weaken the structure considerably

Don't wait for the incident to happen. Act now.