DC Velocity talks with National Forklift Safety Day 2016 Chair Jim Radous about the goals of the third annual safety-focused event sponsored by the Industrial Truck Association.
Forklift safety will be a hot topic on Capitol Hill again this spring. On June 14, members of the Industrial Truck Association (ITA) and others will take part in the organization's third annual National Forklift Safety Day. This event provides an opportunity for the industry to educate customers, the public, and government officials about the safe use of forklifts and the importance of proper operator training.
Safety is one of Washington, D.C.-based ITA's biggest priorities. The organization, which represents manufacturers of lift trucks, tow tractors, pallet trucks, and automated guided vehicles in North America, promotes international standards for product safety, advances engineering and safety practices, and offers free safety seminars for OSHA personnel. ITA also disseminates statistical information and holds industry forums.
ITA says it hopes National Forklift Safety Day will provide greater awareness of safe practices as well as encourage safer behavior in warehouses, distribution centers, and manufacturing plants. That's a laudable goal and something that directly affects every environment where forklifts are in use.
To learn more about the event, we spoke with James J. Radous III, president of forklift manufacturer UniCarriers Americas Corp. and the National Forklift Safety Day 2016 chair. Here's what he had to say.
Q: What is the purpose of National Forklift Safety Day?
A: You asked about NFSD's purpose, but we think of it more as a mission. That mission is to reduce forklift accidents and to improve operator training. One key to improved operator training, of course, is to increase the awareness of its importance. This year, we expanded the scope to include pedestrian awareness as well.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, in a four-year period including 2011 to 2014, 261 workers were killed in industrial truck accidents where the industrial truck was identified as the primary cause. Accidents and injuries, including fatalities, have been declining, but we need to keep driving those numbers down, because losing even one person is a tragedy.
Of course, we want organizations to focus on safety every day, not just on National Forklift Safety Day, but it's good to have a special day to highlight the issue. We're not just discussing this among ourselves within the industry, by the way. We also talk to national policymakers, and we were successful in getting a number of states to pass National Forklift Safety Day resolutions last year.
Q: What activities will the June 14 event in Washington include?
A: In the morning, we will have speakers, including forklift industry leaders like Brett Wood, chairman of Toyota Material Handling North America, who currently serves as chairman of ITA's board of directors. I will also be speaking as chair of National Forklift Safety Day. We will also hear from Jordan Barab, who is the deputy assistant secretary of labor for occupational safety and health, and second in command at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). We will also have someone from the National Safety Council as a speaker because we want to extend the discussion to include pedestrian safety. And we will hear from Rep. Tim Walberg of Michigan, who heads the House Subcommittee on Workforce Protections, which has OSHA oversight.
In the afternoon, we will have congressional meetings on Capitol Hill. Our purpose there is to make legislators aware of what we're doing and to thank them for their support of our agenda. Interestingly, several of the people we've met with in Congress have driven forklifts themselves, maybe for a summer job when they were in college, so they have an idea of what we're talking about.
Q: Tell us about ITA's relationship with OSHA.
A: We believe that we have an excellent relationship with OSHA because we've put a lot of effort into it. We've had a national alliance with OSHA for over 12 years now, and we'll formally renew that alliance for another five years the day before National Forklift Safety Day. We've given over 25 forklift safety seminars for OSHA personnel throughout the country, and we're planning on doing five more this year, which will give us a total of about 600 OSHA attendees for full-day safety sessions, which have been very well received.
We think these efforts and other alliance activities give us a reputation with OSHA as an organization that's committed to and knowledgeable about industrial truck safety. Even before our alliance began, ITA successfully petitioned OSHA to adopt detailed operator-training regulations that seem to have reduced accidents dramatically. Our current regulatory project is to ask OSHA to update its regulations to recognize the latest consensus forklift safety standard, updating the regulatory reference from the 1969 version of the standard to the 2012 version. This will recognize a significant number of safety improvements in forklifts over the last several decades. What all of this means is that we see a lot of value and put a lot of emphasis on our relationship with OSHA.
Q: How will ITA members be recognizing National Forklift Safety Day at the local level?
A: The best way to reach forklift owners is through their local dealers. A lot of dealers will be offering free operator training on that day. The free training day at the regional level is something we're really pushing. It was very successful last year. My company, for example, had completely full rosters all day long at all of the facilities where we offered it. If we can multiply that by all of our members' dealerships, then we'll really make an impact. We're developing online safety information and other materials we can get into the hands of the dealers and the end users.
Q: What is the main message ITA would like DC Velocity's readers to take away from National Forklift Safety Day?
A: The main message is that the most important asset in business is your employees and that the safety of your employees—not just forklift operators but also pedestrians—should be paramount. We need to provide a safe environment in order to consistently reduce accidents and hopefully eliminate mishaps related to the operation of forklifts.
Have you ever gone on YouTube and searched for "forklift accident"? You get over 120,000 results! Not all are U.S.-based, of course, but you can see what kinds of things happen when people don't follow safe practices.
There are so many examples of improper operation. Driving too fast, turning too fast, failing to warn pedestrians, improper braking, improperly securing a load—the list goes on and on. More than anything else, safety depends on a combination of properly maintained equipment and the right training for people. That's our message for National Forklift Safety Day.
Family-owned business Cibao Meat Products, a producer of Hispanic-style sausages and deli meats, has long prided itself on staying true to the traditions and values the company was founded on in 1969—like a commitment to high-quality ingredients and a family workplace atmosphere. Less of a source of pride, however, was its continuing reliance on the same, mostly manual, processes and data management techniques used at its inception.
With the company now selling its meats to retail giants such as BJ’s, Sam’s Club, and Costco as well as 500 supermarkets and restaurants across the U.S., Cibao president Heinz Vieluf Jr. knew that it was time to take the company into the digital age. “As a third-generation leader of a multigenerational company, I put an emphasis on bringing our business into the digital future and utilizing technologies that will help propel success,” he said in a statement.
IN WITH THE NEW
In Cibao’s case, that would require modernizing its data-collection practices. Because the meat producer still relied on legacy processes, its company data and customer data were siloed, scattered throughout departments from sales to manufacturing to accounting. Teams were manually gathering information and creating reports on a weekly or biweekly basis. As a result, company leaders had no real-time visibility into business-critical operations. On top of that, creating those reports ate up hours of team members’ time each week.
For help bringing all of its organizational data into one central location, Cibao turned to the Slingshot work management platform from software company Infragistics. In October 2023, the company began working with Slingshot to compile data from multiple sources into a centralized hub that would be accessible to every employee.
Today, with the new platform in place, Cibao is benefiting from enhanced data transparency across the company and from accelerated data-reporting capabilities. Employees can now create reports within minutes, eliminating the biweekly reports in favor of daily assessments and unlocking insights needed to make critical decisions 10 times faster than before—saving 120 hours a month, the company says. For example, now that it has real-time access to its customer payment data, Cibao’s accounts receivable team has been able to detect any discrepancies in real time. This has allowed the team to check in with customers as soon as they notice a potential issue, which has increased the company’s cash flow by $40,000 a week on average, or up to 65%.
STRENGTHENING THE BOTTOM LINE
With teams saving hours each week on reporting, Cibao employees can now concentrate on higher-value tasks. For instance, they have more time to connect one-on-one with clients and develop relationships, instead of getting held up on the back end. They can also focus on new marketing efforts and promotions, not only boosting customer satisfaction but also helping to grow existing customer relationships and develop new ones.
“We created Slingshot to bring together data that has traditionally been spread across departments into one completely accessible space so that companies can better drive productivity, insights, and ultimately business results,” said Dean Guida, founder of Slingshot, in the statement. “By bringing its data into a central location, Cibao Meat Products has unlocked insights that have allowed [it] to move strategically and at a faster pace, strengthening the company’s bottom line.”
As autonomous systems take on a bigger role in logistics and industrial production applications, the race is on to make the equipment smarter, more efficient, and safer. To accelerate work in this area, the German lift truck and logistics technology vendor Kion Group is partnering with a local university to support expanded studies on artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomous systems.
According to Kion, Peitz’s work will focus on the development of autonomous systems that operate intelligently and safely for all parties involved, with a particular focus on autonomous mobile robots, forklift trucks, and AI-based systems that are used in logistics and production environments.
The objective of the endowed professorship is to advance the field of research at the highest international level, Kion said in a statement. In close collaboration with research networks and other partners both within and outside TU Dortmund University, such as the Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics IML and the Kion Group itself, the professorship will form a “hub” for digital and intelligent logistics, the company added.
American skin-care company ET Browne—best known for its Palmer’s Cocoa Butter—has trimmed costs, boosted revenue, and increased profits thanks to a recent IT upgrade from its longtime technology partner Syspro, a global enterprise resource planning (ERP) software provider that specializes in serving manufacturing and distribution businesses. ET Browne has run on Syspro software for 25 years and racked up some of its biggest year-over-year improvements following a 2023 upgrade to the latest version of Syspro ERP—an enhancement that allowed it to leverage the platform’s material requirements and planning (MRP) capabilities to build a just-in-time inventory system.
The net result? A smoother-running supply chain.
“We’ve successfully relied on [Syspro] for more than a quarter century while both growing and aligning our business to take advantage of the [platform’s] enhancements,” Pieter Goes, ET Browne’s vice president of IT & BI (business intelligence), said in a statement describing the project. “After bringing in [Syspro] to do native demand forecasts, we were able to better evaluate key markets and key customers, enabling our forecasting and capacity planning to be much more accurate. As a result, we can achieve a fill rate of greater than 95% and are able to process our purchase orders much sooner, resulting in better supply.”
NEW CAPABILITIES, BETTER OUTCOMES
Syspro’s MRP capabilities allow companies to balance supply and demand for materials and components so they can accelerate manufacturing production. With the system upgrade, ET Browne was able to take advantage of those capabilities to gain better visibility and control over inventory and the supply chain. As the companies explain, this allowed ET Browne to predict demand, understand how filling the projected sales pipeline would affect production schedules, and anticipate the peaks in demand it would need to buffer.
Leveraging those demand forecasting and supply chain management capabilities, ET Browne created a just-in-time inventory system that has dramatically reduced the amount of raw material and product it keeps on hand—a move that is translating into increased profits: Since implementing the upgrade, ET Browne has reduced inventory by 22% and increased profits 113% on 7% revenue growth.
ET Browne’s leaders say they intend to leverage Syspro to manage emerging challenges as well. Those include meeting growing consumer, distributor, and government demands to use recycled materials in packaging, while also making sure the company first uses up the materials it already has on hand. That transition will increase complexity within the company’s bill of materials, something Syspro’s management capabilities can help it navigate.
“[Syspro] ERP provides much more than just financial management,” Brian Rainboth, CEO of Syspro Americas, said in the statement. “Our platform empowers mid-market manufacturers to create accurate demand forecasts [and] project exactly how much raw material they’ll need to order and how much product they need to make to meet demand. We’re proud to celebrate 25 years with ET Browne and look forward to enabling future growth and profitability as the company deploys additional capabilities with [our] platform.”
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Illustration courtesy of Clean Energy Fuels Corporation
For consumers, the car-buying process generally includes a test drive so they can see if the vehicle lives up to its hype before they plunk down any money. But the process can be a little more difficult for commercial fleet managers.
The 2025 Peterbilt 579 day cab tractor, branded in Clean Energy’s signature green, will be available for fleets to test on their normal routes for up to two weeks. And if you don’t happen to have an RNG fueling station in your own yard, that’s no problem: The fleets testing the demo truck will be able to use Clean Energy’s fueling infrastructure, which consists of over 600 stations across North America, 200 of which have public tractor-trailer access.
First in line to try the new rig—which can haul heavy loads for an 800-mile range—is transportation and logistics giant J.B. Hunt Transport Inc. After Hunt completes its trial, the truck will make its way through large and medium-sized heavy-duty trucking companies in California, Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Florida. Clean Energy says it expects to run the X15N demo truck program at least through 2025.
“Vehicles powered by renewable natural gas produce significantly less carbon emissions throughout their lifecycle and are more compatible with today’s available infrastructure than most competing emissions-reduction technologies,” Greer Woodruff, executive vice president of safety, sustainability, and maintenance at J.B. Hunt, said in a release. “The new technology and supporting fuel network in this pilot have the potential to be a viable, cost-effective solution for customers wanting to decrease their carbon footprint in the near term.”
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Photo courtesy of Hong Kong Air Cargo Terminals Ltd. (Hactl)
The independent airfreight handler Hong Kong Air Cargo Terminals Ltd. (Hactl) has found a way to green up its operations and keep folks hydrated at the same time. The company recently announced that instead of sending old staff uniforms to a landfill, it had upcycled them into 5,000 plastic cups.
Old uniforms often end up in the waste stream because they’re made ofblended fibers, which are typically difficult to recycle. But through Hactl’s “Zero Waste Uniform Upcycling Project,” polyester fibers from the old uniforms were recycled through processes like melt-granulation into raw plastic granules that were then used to manufacture recyclable cups.
“In Hong Kong, the aviation industry, like many industries, provides uniforms for front-line staff. Dealing with old uniforms is an important environmental issue,” Hactl Chief Executive Wilson Kwong said in a release. “We hope that through this project, we can break through traditional limitations and recycle old uniforms to achieve ‘zero waste upcycling’ and reduce the burden on landfills, while encouraging the industry to contribute toward a circular economy and sustainable development.”
The initiative is part of the company’s overall efforts to curb waste. Hactl launched its “Green Terminal” sustainability program in 2018 and has committed to achieving a 75% waste recycling rate by 2030.